Wimbledon surprise for Irish man served by Kim Clijsters

Most tennis fans go to Wimbledon expecting to face strawberries and cream instead of 100mph serves.

But for a County Wicklow man, nothing would stand in the way of getting a rally with Belgian grand slam winner Kim Clijsters - not even having to borrow a set of tennis whites.

Chris Quinn, from Greystones, was unexpectedly challenged onto the court during an invitational match on Friday.

After shouting to the star from his seat, Clijsters invited him to play.

Realising he was not in regulation tennis whites, she grabbed spares from her own kit.

The video of him facing a serve has racked up over two million hits on Wimbledon's YouTube channel.

For Chris, it was all a bit of "light-hearted" fun at a ladies' invitational doubles match.

He said the match was slightly less serious that what goes on at centre court, and that the spectators had been interacting with the players throughout the game.

"Kim had said to the audience, 'will I serve left or right?' and I said 'body serve', and the next thing you know, she responded to my shout-out by saying, 'do you think you can handle my serve?'"

Mr Quinn, who is the captain of Greystones Lawn Tennis Club, immediately hopped onto the court for a once-in-a-lifetime sporting moment.

He did not, however, expect to be pulling on one of the four-time grand slam winner's skirts.

"Before she was about to serve to me, she runs over to her bag, pulls out what I thought was a pair of shorts, but as she got closer I realised it was a skort," said Mr Quinn.

But not to be deterred, the Greystones man was a good sport and wriggled the skort up around his hips - game on!

"I wasn't leaving the court until I got to play against Kim Clijsters so did I pull them up? Absolutely and I'd do it again," he said.

Since last week's wow moment at Wimbledon, Mr Quinn has had the chance to talk to Clijsters again - and he thanked her on Twitter for being such a good sport.

She also let him keep the now infamous skort, and Mr Quinn is putting it up for auction to raise money for charity.

He said the day had been absolutely fantastic, and that "life's too short not to say yes to things like that".

"It's not every day you can say you've shared headlines with Roger Federer on the Wimbledon page, that's one off my bucket list."