The weather in England, as in the rest of Great Britain, tends to be a topic of conversation at any time of the year, and usually for all the wrong reasons. But there is nothing quite like an English summer. An important part of that summer is that most English of sporting events, The Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, otherwise known as ‘Wimbledon’.
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Wimbledon is not so much renowned for the quality of the tennis played there, nor for the shaping of young talents – with Boris Becker being the most notable exception in (relatively) recent times - but for its atmosphere, its history and, ultimately, for its ‘Englishness’.
Where else can you eat those succulent strawberries fresh from the field, albeit a Dutch one, and at a price more fit for caviar, (but spectators still consume around 28,000 kilograms over the two weeks). And at what other tournament do the players have to ‘wear predominantly white’? None is the answer, and long may Wimbledon continue to be different.
But even at this most stately and conservative of tournaments it isn’t all about protocol and rules. Just consider a particularly rainy summer, even by English standards, in 1997, when rain interrupted play so often that the usual ‘free Sunday’ had to be sacrificed to allow play to catch up with schedule.
Not only were there thousands of spectators, many of whom were young children, who wouldn’t normally have had the chance to experience this wonderful atmosphere first-hand, but the entertainment on offer that memorable day in June was also top-notch – and we are not talking about the tennis, though that was good, too.
No, it was the day that Sir Cliff Richard, with the help of some friends, enthralled a cheerful, rain-soaked crowd on centre court with some of his greatest hits. Those who were there, and many of us watching it on our TV screens, will never forget the sight and sound of Sir Cliff ‘going on a summer holiday’ with tennis legends Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova, each winners of a record 20 Wimbledon titles in all events.
Wimbledon has its fair share of things unique. Starting with the aforementioned dress code, the players are met by a host of unusual, some would say eccentric, circumstances. There is, of course, the surface the tournament is played on. Grass used to be the common choice for all the so-called ‘Grand Slams’, but, since the Australian Open abandoned it for their very own version of a hard court surface, Wimbledon is the only major tennis event to be played on the green stuff.
Another ‘oddity’ is the unequal distribution of prize money between male and female players: Wimbledon is the last Grand Slam tournament where the men get more than the women. But this might change in the near future, especially since women’s tennis appears to be drawing not only equal, but sometimes larger crowds than the men’s event.
But that might also be regarded as a typical facet of Wimbledon: its ability to remain highly traditional but stylishly appealing. Yet another unthinkable change shows this most beautifully, in every sense of the word. The umpires, line judges and ball boys and girls no longer wear their traditional green and mauve uniforms: after 129 years, the designer Ralph Lauren came up with a navy and cream outfit that he called “classically Wimbledon, yet very modern”.
Whatever the uniform, the English Grand Slam tournament remains the most highly prized among many of the top players. Not because of the money that the Lawn Tennis Club are willing to pay the winners, but more because of its history and its unique place in the tennis calendar. All that remains now is for a British player to win in the final for the first time in living memory, which would be the cherry on the cake. Or should that be the strawberry?
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