LONDON—Few, if any, Americans have loved England or observed it as closely as Henry James. In one of his travel books, he dated his fascination with the country to his walking, accidentally, past a bar in London that had played a role in one of his favorite novels, by Thackeray. The site of a small statue on top of the door, a statue that the book’s narrator had described in loving detail, inspired this memory in James: “It was a thrilling thought that the statue had been familiar to the hero of the incomparable novel. All history appeared to live again, and the continuity of things to vibrate through my mind.”
James wrote those words more than 100 years ago, when there was even less history to the U.S. than there is now. But the U.K., as well as the rest of Europe, still inspires the same feeling in Americans when we’re here. My favorite sight in Paris may be the statue of Marshall Ney that stands, sword high, in front of La Closerie des Lilas, and which Hemingway described in A Moveable Feast. Each time I pass it, I’m amazed again that it’s still there, that it survived a World War and decades of potential vandalism, that the same object that Hemingway looked at in the 1920s is in front of my eyes now. As James put it, history appears to be alive at that moment.
For a tennis fan, that’s the idea behind Wimbledon, even if it doesn’t always work that way these days. The equivalent of the Ney statue for me in England is the tall, thin steeple of St. Mary’s Church (the site has been a church of some sort since 1086) that looms over the grounds from the top of the hill on Church Road. If it weren’t there, would I know I was in England? The steeple seems to watch over the courts below.
The same is true inside Centre Court; history really does come alive there, amid the gangways and the ivy and all of the green and gold and white. Part of you can’t believe, when you sit behind one of the baselines, that that spot, right in front of you, so close it feels like you can reach out to it, is the spot where Budge served to Cram, McEnroe served to Borg, Nadal served to Federer, Sabatini failed to hold serve against Graf. It’s a tennis court like any other—same net height, same dimensions—but it’s one that’s populated by famous ghosts, and if you’re a player, intimidating and inspiring ghosts. Centre Court is one of the few places in tennis where players don’t just play for themselves; the best and most ambitious of them walk onto it to take their place in the sport, to walk alongside other greats. How else do young players get inspired to play in the first place, but by watching the heroes of their childhoods win on Centre Court?
Tennis in particular needs those ghosts. It needs the tradition of a place like Wimbledon, because the brutal reality is that it’s a sport that emphasizes the transiency of youth and time. This transiency was driven home to me yesterday when I watched Nikolay Davydenko look utterly hapless—i.e., old—against Australian teenager Bernard Tomic. Davydenko is barely 30; his birthday was June 2. Yesterday, it looked like you could stick a fork in him.
But not all of Centre Court feels historic anymore. Even when the roof isn’t closed, it's a gargantuan, overbearing presence out of all proportion to its use. Looking up at it, it appears nearly as large as the structure it's meant to protect. And while Centre Court's front entrance, and the balcony above it, has been maintained, offices and office windows have been added to the structure everywhere else. From most vantage points, it looks like a corporate headquarters rather than a venerable sporting arena. But space is limited here, and Wimbledon has been big business, rather than just a game, for decades now.
A more delicate balancing act is going on right now on the outer grounds. This year the old Court 2, the infamous Graveyard of Champions, was bulldozed in favor of a mini-amphitheatre, now named Court 3. It actually seats fewer people than the old Court 2, but it allowed the Club to change the landscape and create more walking space among the side courts. But to do that, the Club had to knock down two other beloved features of the grounds (or at least beloved by me). A set of old stone bleachers that looked over what used to be Court 3 (now called Court 4), and a scoreboard tower from another age known as the Crow’s Nest.
The club has done a tasteful and farsighted, if slightly underwhelming, job in replacing them. Below one side of the new Court 3, there's now a wide walking area paved with brick, and a new standing-room section where spectators line up between pillars to view the side courts. The gangways under Centre Court are echoed here—a nice touch. I do miss the stone bleachers and the Crow’s Nest, but while the brick walkway has none of their resonance yet, and is hardly an eye-catching piece of architecture, it doesn’t look out of place, which is about all you can ask of it right now. It will look better in 10 years; it will be an essential piece of the landscape in 100. For the moment, it also feels just a little easier to move around in the side court garden.
But for everything gained, something is lost. Both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open appear to be taking their cues from the Australian Open. Melbourne Park is dominated by a set of interchangeable and faceless mid-size arenas, much like the new mini-stadiums we see here. No arena at Wimbledon can be called faceless, though, simply because of the surface of the court inside it. If it’s still green grass, and if St Mary's is still in the distance, it's still Wimbledon. As John Isner said yesterday, the new Court 3 is a nice, compact, enclosed space for playing and viewing, with no outside distractions from the grounds and no bad seats. But sitting in it yesterday, watching Isner play, I kept thinking back to the old, outdated, nothing special but still beautiful and resonant Court 2, the one place where you felt lucky to walk into a Graveyard.
Thinking back to the narrow little corridor that led from the outside directly to the press seats in one corner of the bleachers. If you stood there and looked antsy enough, the police-hatted ushers would let you sneak in before the changeover. It felt like you were being let into some place exclusive, and you were. As you ducked in, you passed a girl, usually the same mop-topped girl, whose (now-automated) job it was to punch in the score—every point, game, and set—for the various scoreboards and TV monitors around the grounds. Her eyes bulged with the boredom and non-stop attention that it required of her.
Thinking back also to watching, from those press seats, a classic five-setter of touch and variety, and a little bit of stupidity, between Xavier Malisse and Guillermo Coria; watching another between Radek Stepanek and Mikhail Youzhny, in which the sounds of Stepanek smashing his racquets could be heard as Youzhny went through his victory salute; watching Jill Craybas’s upset of Serena Williams, in which Serena waved me off as she walked off court, thinking I wanted an autograph—I was standing there with a pen and a notebook, after all.
Thinking back most of all to the long evenings spent watching tennis there as the sun went down and red double-decker buses crisscrossed on the road just outside the club—you could see their second decks above the wall. They were another part of the scenery that let this American know exactly where he was.
You can’t see those buses now; the sides of Court 3 rise too high. A loss, yes. But it's also true that for everything lost, something can be gained. Instead of looking for the double-deckers yesterday evening as the sun went down, I looked in the direction of the old Crow’s Nest and its scoreboards. They aren't there anymore, but their absence has opened up a better view of the St. Mary's steeple at the top of the hill. The continuity of things, in Henry James's words, still vibrates at Wimbledon. I still know where I am.