Ladies Singles Final - Wimbledon
Here at Fox & Chave we have a close association with the game of lawn tennis. More specifically that is a geographical association being that our company is based in the Chiltern market town of Chesham in Buckinghamshire.
No more than a half a mile from the office door is Germains House, the location where in 1874 its then owner, one John Hale, formalised and then published the rules for his variation of the game that he called Germains Lawn Tennis.
Hale’s game bore some similarities to the earlier development of one by Harry Gem and his friend Augurio Perera that they played on Perera’s croquet lawn at his house in Edgbaston, Birmingham as early as 1859. The pair of friends going on in 1872 to found, with others, the first tennis club at Leamington Spa.
Tennis Ball Cuff Links
However, both can be said to have lost out on the credit for the popularising of the sport to Welshman Major Walter Clopton Wingfield who in 1874 patented a New and Improved Court for Playing the Ancient Game of Tennis and began marketing his game in the spring of 1874 selling boxed sets that included rubber balls imported from Germany as well as a net, poles, court markers, rackets and an instruction manual.
Hale’s Germain variant of the game had elements that overlapped with Wingfield’s perhaps for people who had already bought the latter’s boxed set of equipment, but the major distinction between the two was the shape of the court.
While both the Edgbaston and Chesham games were played on a rectangular court, the Wingfield game, entitled in clumsy Greek Sphairistikè, meaning ’pertaining to a ball game’, was laid out on an hourglass shape with service taking place from a diamond shaped box at each end. Evident from the current universal format it was the court shape similar to that of the former two that was adopted by The All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club for their first tournament in 1877.
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This week, the only major tennis tournament still played on grass continues at the club on its second site in Church Road, SW19 to which it moved in 1922. The Championships, considered the premier tennis tournament in the world is known simply as Wimbledon.
The event features knockout competitions for men & women, in singles, doubles and mixed doubles, with junior events in the same minus the mixed doubles. Invitation matches played in a round robin format also form a part of the two-week festival of the sport in men’s and women’s wheelchair singles and doubles, senior men’s doubles, and men’s & women’s doubles.
128 players begin both the men’s and women’s single competitions with admission being based upon international ranking. 104 of these are direct to the men’s tournament and 108 to the women’s with 8 wild card selections and the remainder undertaking qualifying matches.
32 players are given seeding placing them within the draw in position to avoid clashes between the more highly ranked players until the latter stages of the tournament.
Roger Federer
In the history of the Championships the most successful entrant in the men’s tournament is the still active Roger Federer. Regarded by some as the greatest player of all time, the Swiss has won the Men’s tournament 8 times, and is equal to Bjorn Borg for consecutive wins with 5.
In the women’s game Czech American Martina Navratilova retains a seemingly tough to beat record of 9 triumphs from a total 18 Grand Slam tournament wins, including 6 consecutive wins between 1982 and 1987.
Other notable performances at Wimbledon in the Open era, that’s post 1968 when professionals and amateur players could compete against one another, include the Semi-final placing in 1977 of John McEnroe, the highest position achieved to date by a qualifier.
Jubilee Crown Silk Tie - Purple
The 1985 victory by the then 17 years old Boris Becker, who being unseeded and beginning the tournament as a 14-1 shot, remains the youngest success by an entrant in the men’s tournament. He was also the first German to win the event.
Martina Hingis is the youngest woman to win a Wimbledon title when in 1996 at the age of 15 years 282 days she won the ladies doubles with partner Helena Sukova. A year later she won the ladies singles event at the age of 16 years 3 months, the youngest woman to do so since the 15 year and 285 day old Lottie Dod won the same event in 1887.
Croatian Goran Ivanišević is the only wild card to win the Gentlemen's Singles Championship when he defeated Australian Patrick Rafter in 2001 in the twilight of his career and at the final attempt. At the time he was ranked 125th in the world having been as high as No.2 only 4 years previously.
Certain traditions are put in place by the rules of the All England Club, which itself still exists as a private club of 375 members.
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The traditional Wimbledon colours are dark green and purple. However, it is required that all players wear all-white or at least almost all-white clothing. Some colour accents are considered acceptable, provided the colour scheme is not that of an identifiable commercial brand logo.
Other traditions have organic origins. The most notable is perhaps the determination of winners of the men’s and women’s singles championships to ascend into the stands to celebrate with their friends, families and coaches at the point of victory.
While the current centre court arena makes allowance for this to be relatively straightforward, it wasn’t quite such a direct route when Australian Pat Cash left all etiquette in the dust forever when after defeating the favourite Ivan Lendl in the 1987 final he clambered over spectators and scrambled atop a commentary box to leap into the players seating in the old arena where his loved ones were waiting, all to the delight of the Wimbledon crowds. The tradition has endured ever since.
Strawberries sans Cream
Another unofficial tradition has nothing to do with the tennis and everything to do with Strawberries. An estimated 27,000 kilos are eaten each year during the two weeks of the tournament, usually topped with cream to the sum of 7,000 total litres. Both are supplied daily from English farms with the strawberries being picked each morning of the tournament.