Wimbledon

Wimbledon is the oldest tennis tournament in the game, one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments and the only one to be played on grass.

The Wimbledon tennis tournament traditionally takes place in late June and early July and runs for two weeks, with the women’s final played on the second Saturday and the men’s final on the Sunday. Each year, alongside the five major tournaments that are contested there are also four junior events and four invitational events.

Wimbledon is the only tennis tournament to enforce a strict dress code for competitors, insisting that they play in traditional white, and although the rules have been relaxed slightly in recent years the players still respectfully adhere to them.

The courts at Wimbledon are all arranged around the biggest in the middle,” Centre court” where all of the finals take place, and No.1 Court, both of which are only used for the Wimbledon tournament. Both of these courts will host matches during the London Olympics in 2012, used for the first time in their illustrious history for an event other than Wimbledon.

In 2009 a retractable roof was placed over the 15,000 capacity Centre court in order for play to continue through rain, and more occasionally, extreme heat. Centre court hosts the semi finals and finals of the tournament in addition to earlier round matches of the top seeded players and local favourites. The Royal Box is situated at the southern end of the court, and the British Royal family regularly attend, it is traditional for the players to bow or curtsey when entering or exiting the court in the presence of either the Queen or the Prince of Wales.

Wimbledon is widely considered to be the most important tennis championship in the world and draws all of the top players. The tournament is divided into 5 main events: Men’s singles, Ladies singles, Men’s doubles, Ladies doubles and Mixed doubles. Each singles event consists of 128 players, all battling to win a share of the 21 million dollars prize money on offer.

At the northern end of the grounds there is a giant television screen on which important matches are broadcast to the crowd that gathers on the hill, named after the popular British players of the day, in the past few years the hill has been known as “Rusedski Ridge”, “Henman Hill” and “Murray Mound”, showing that the British still have a sense of humor despite the fact that the last British player to win a Wimbledon singles title was Virginia Wade in 1977, and the last time they had a men’s champion was back in 1936, when Fred Perry lifted the trophy.

Wimbledon was first broadcast live on the television in 1937 in black and white, and the first match broadcast in color was in 1967. It now enjoys a huge worldwide audience, with an estimated 5.6 million people tuning in to the 2010 men’s final between Rafael Nadal and Tomas Berdych, and an average television audience of 2.3 million for Serena Williams win over Vera Zvonareva in the women’s final.

Martina Navratilova is the most successful player to have played at Wimbledon, winning 9 Wimbledon titles during her long career, while the most successful male player to date is Pete Sampras, with 7 Wimbledon titles to his name.