Why Wimbledon Endures

This was an unusually challenging, frustrating, and—at the risk of overstatement—perilous Wimbledon. For nine consecutive days, London was in the grip of what the All England Club officials called “persistent wet weather.” Some players were captive on site through three meal cycles, waiting for their matches to be called, resumed, moved or canceled. Others sustained injuries on the damp turf. We may have seen a new record established for the longest-ever game of Yahtzee.

Yet here’s the remarkable thing. Despite the plethora of interruptions, injuries and debilitating matches, the players have voiced scant—if any—public complaints about the tournament. The only thing undampened by the weather was the fealty of the competitors. Sitting in the main interview room on a somber, chilly evening after losing a fourth-round match to Barbora Krejcikova, Danielle Collins was asked how she felt about her final Wimbledon.

Collins, who is retiring at the end of the year, replied, “I just think the historical preservation, what they do here, is so, so special. It’s one of the most special events in sports history. I always love coming here. I feel the warmth from the people who put so much effort behind this event and really make it what it is. It is just one of the coolest experiences you can get to have as an athlete.”

The sentiment and respect expressed by Collins was echoed by one player after another, even as they contemplated bringing flippers and a snorkel instead of racquets to the club. Veteran Gael Monfils, for whom the grass courts are a Rubik’s Cube, told press: “I wish I could play much better here because I really like the place. I like the vibes. It’s beautiful, like a really, really beautiful tournament.”

During the first week, Madison Keys called Wimbledon “the pinnacle of tennis,” and Novak Djokovic, hastening a return from minor surgery, admitted, “Just the thought of me missing Wimbledon was just not correct. I didn’t want to deal with that.”

Coco Gauff explained that even though this was her fifth go-round at Wimbledon, it just feels like a new, fresh experience every year. “I have special memories,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s because it was my first big tournament, or just Wimbledon in itself.”

These and numerous other, similar testimonies produced through the first week-plus of the tournament are striking given what the conditions were, and how frazzled and fickle your typical ATP or WTA star can be. But it’s even more remarkable that stodgy old Wimbledon’s prestige is growing at the same exact time that the status quo and many manifestations of tradition in and beyond tennis are under steady attack. These days, disruption is often considered cool, and change is frequently seen as unequivocally desirable.

It isn’t surprising that every other week, it seems some entity or other is finding a magic bullet for expanding the popularity of tennis—for abandoning the status quo. It may be a new, streamlined scoring system of the kind that is being trialed by the ATP and in numerous pop-up exhibitions. Some want to encourage fans to yell and scream to their heart’s content during play. Other reformers would eliminate time-consuming best-of-five set matches, and television executives have their own self-interested visions. Of course, someone out there is always railing about the “predominantly white” clothing rule that is so integral to our love of Wimbledon—and such a headache for clothing merchants.

Yet the status of the most tradition-bound tournament of them all continues to flourish. Taylor Fritz said that if given a choice to win any major, a player who would pick anything but Wimbledon would “probably be lying.”

But it’s a mistake to assume that Wimbledon is revered because the players have to prance around in white shorts, the public address announcer sounds like a moonlighting star imported from Masterpiece Theatre, and the place is choc-a-block with “Magical Amethyst Blue” hydrangeas and other flora.

The real secret of Wimbledon is that it works as well as it looks.

The All England Club has a dazzling track record when it comes to making wise decisions, going all the way back (for our purposes) to 1968, when Wimbledon became the first of the Grand Slam tournaments to open its doors to professional players. The decision triggered an explosion of interest in the game, and almost immediately stimulated lively—and often silly—calls to deep-six anything that could be deemed “traditional” (code for backward, or overly conservative).

True, Wimbledon has sometimes been late to the party. It took the club 34 years to match the US Open’s policy of awarding equal prize money to the women. It was a mistake for the club to resist approving a fifth-set tiebreaker as long as it did. The Australian Open had a retractable roof 21 years before Wimbledon loped off a tier of cheap seats on Centre Court and installed a sliding lid of its own.

On the other hand, while Wimbledon has embraced change slowly, its renovations have been so in keeping with the original concept—the “vibe” Monfils spoke about—that they are almost unnoticeable. It often takes Wimbledon time to get there, but it almost always does the right as well as the smart thing. Sometimes, with a little help from friends.

Take the roof issue. Tournaments did not add toppers simply to keep players dry and fans from demanding refunds. They were looking ahead to the added revenue that split (day/night) sessions would produce. But the cost to the well-being of the players has been onerous and well-documented. Night matches now routinely end on the following day, often in the wee hours, raising a host of questions revolving around both health and fairness.

At Roland Garros, which introduced night play in 2023, Novak Djokovic was unable this year to subdue Lorenzo Musetti in the third round until after 3 a.m. The defending champion was then pushed to five sets in his ensuing match before hurting his knee and quitting the tournament. Night sessions in Paris also gave the women short shrift, for practical reasons that don’t matter here. It’s unlikely that the three Slam that have split sessions are going to abdicate night tennis and the revenues it generates.

At Wimbledon, the local Merton Town Council instituted an 11 p.m. curfew for Wimbledon in 2009, the year the Centre Court roof was introduced. The club has accepted that with equanimity, and it has always rejected the lure of split sessions. It is now the only major where the results cannot be compromised by matches that end too late.

Ons Jabeur has good reason to have mixed feelings about Wimbledon and all the pageantry and hoopla that comes with it. She was paralyzed by the pressure of playing a final in the most closely-watched tennis tournament of them all each of the last two years, an indignity she was spared this year when she lost in the third round to Elina Svitolina.

But this is what she said about Wimbledon:

“I feel like when people speak to me when I’m passing by, or practicing, they’re sincere. They want me to win. It’s not like other tournaments, where they say the same words to all the players. ‘I want you to win.’ Then the next one comes, they want them to win, too. . . I feel like I really created a great connection with the crowd here. It’s, like, pure love. Like nothing [false] behind it.”

Now if the All England Club could work on eliminating that lingering mist that passes for rain in London, Wimbledon would be perfect.