WIMBLEDON, England -- It was one of those "Where were you?" moments.
Shortly after 10:30 p.m. England time, on a fourth straight day of fine summery weather in Blighty, a co-worker dining at a jam-packed Thai restaurant in heaving Wimbledon Village got a phone call. Voice rising, then subsiding as the call ended, she was told that the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, was dead.
Whoa.
Suddenly there was a heightened buzz at the four-seat table, and conversation about fish cakes, chicken satay and jungle curry ended. Since the tables were tight, a neighboring diner, who happened to be the husband of U.S. No. 3 Bethanie Mattek-Sands, said he'd heard the same thing. Mattek-Sands was there, too, and soon one of their entourage appeared to be on the phone with someone at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, where Jackson was taken after reportedly suffering cardiac arrest and passing away at the age of 50.
When they exited the restaurant roughly half an hour later and veered right, they could hear "Thriller" blaring from a bar that also doubles as a nightclub. ESPN.com tennis editor Matt Wilansky, a Novak Djokovic clone, inquired whether it was coincidence. It wasn't; employees had heard the news and the tributes were beginning.
It wasn't long before U.S. men's No. 1 Andy Roddick -- who is into his entertainment and married to swimsuit model Brooklyn Decker -- weighed in on tennistweets.com. He had heard the news.
By this time, British television news outlets were all over the story, similar to the mass coverage provided when beloved Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car accident in Paris 12 years ago.
"RIP … sad and surreal," Roddick tweeted as the clock approached 11 p.m. "Regardless of what [you] think of him, he was completely revolutionary and will be missed," came a second tweet within 90 seconds.
Serena Williams, a native of Compton, Calif., and like Jackson a hugely successful African-American, expressed her thoughts at 6:26 a.m.: "My heart goes out to the entire Jackson family."
Thanks to the schedule, the 10-time Grand Slam champion was the first player to finish her third-round singles match Friday. Sister Venus, the two-time defending champion, plays her third-round match Saturday.
Serena sometimes has a tendency to use words loosely, especially in defeat, but not in the wake of her wobbly 6-3, 6-4 win over Italian Roberta Vinci. She spoke eloquently of the man she was honored to meet "a few times." Questions about Jackson dominated the press conference.
"I think everyone listens to his music," Williams said. "It's like, you think of the Beatles, you think of Elvis Presley, you think of Michael Jackson. Those are just lifetime icons that I've never forgotten. The things that he did was beyond iconic.
"He did things no one else did. Like, 'Thriller' is the best video ever made, still to this day. The videos he did for his songs, no one had ever even [gone] that far. He started a whole new trend with that. Dances, singing, beats, everything."
Roger Federer, whom many consider to be the greatest tennis player of all time, called Jackson's death "sad." The 14-time Grand Slam winner was a fan.
"I remember, I don't know, back maybe in '88 or '89, he came to Basel," Federer said, referring to his hometown in Switzerland. "I was outside of the stadium, because there was such excitement that he would come. I was still very young. I think I went there with my sister, and we just listened from the outside."
Williams is one of the greatest women's players to have ever lived, but she dabbles in acting. Only this week, Williams revealed she was working on a TV script. Comparing her life to Jackson's would be silly, she said, even if the seeds for their respective careers were sewn early.
"I wouldn't even mention my name and his in the same sentence at all," Williams said. "I think any celebrity who met Michael Jackson was completely [in] awe. I know I was. I kept thinking, 'Oh, my God, it's him, it's him.' Even though I met him, knew him, if I would have saw him on the streets, I still would have been like, 'ahh.'"
Ravi Ubha is a London-based journalist. He holds a business degree from McGill University and a journalism diploma from Concordia University, both in Montreal, where he formerly covered baseball and hockey. Ubha is a tennis and soccer contributor to ESPN.com, also featuring in other publications, and does play-by-play in tennis.
Kamakshi Tandon is a freelance writer and tennis junkie who contributes regularly to ESPN. She has also written for Tennis magazine, Reuters and Dow Jones Newswires. Tandon is based in Toronto.
Sandra Harwitt, a graduate of New York University's School of Journalism, covers tennis for various media outlets. Harwitt has been accepted to pursue a part-time master of science in strategic communications at Columbia University. She is based in South Florida and New York.
Matt Wilansky is the tennis editor for ESPN.com. He joined ESPN in 1998 after graduating with a B.A. in communication from the University of Hartford.
