Wimbledon employs a hawk. His name is Rufus, he’s a Harris’s hawk, he reports for work before dawn during the Championships, he carries his own security accreditation, and his job title, printed on the pass, is “Bird Scarer.” Every morning before the gates open, Rufus flies patrol over Centre Court and the grounds to convince … Read more
The most Wimbledon singles titles ever won belongs, on the women’s side, to Martina Navratilova, whose nine championships include a run of six straight (1982-87) that remains the most sustained ownership of one major in the Open Era. The men’s record is Roger Federer’s eight, a summit that suddenly matters again this fortnight, because Novak … Read more
For 141 years, a Wimbledon match could theoretically last forever, and in 2010, one nearly did. Final sets at the Championships were played to a two-game advantage with no tiebreak of any kind, which is how John Isner and Nicolas Mahut produced the most famous scoreline in tennis: 70-68 in the fifth, eleven hours and … Read more
Wimbledon is the only Grand Slam still played on grass, and the reason is both simpler and stranger than most fans assume. Grass isn’t a quirky choice Wimbledon made; grass is what tennis is. The sport’s full, formal name is lawn tennis, it was invented on Victorian croquet lawns, and the All England Club that … Read more
Wimbledon is the only Grand Slam on earth where you can wake up with no ticket, stand in a line, and watch Centre Court that afternoon. The mechanism is The Queue, capital T, capital Q, an institution so formal it has its own printed Code of Conduct, numbered queue cards, dedicated stewards, and a tent … Read more
The most Grand Slam singles titles in tennis history is 24, a number that, remarkably, sits atop both lists: Novak Djokovic holds the men’s record with 24, and Margaret Court holds the women’s record with 24, with Serena Williams one agonizing title behind at 23, the most by any woman in the Open Era. Those … Read more
Every Wimbledon, it happens: a match builds toward its crescendo deep in the London evening, and then, at 11 p.m., it simply stops. Players walk off mid-drama, the crowd groans, and casual viewers around the world ask the same question, why does the most prestigious tournament in tennis have a bedtime? The answer isn’t tradition … Read more
Every summer, the world’s most famous tennis tournament doubles as the world’s largest strawberry stand. Over the Wimbledon fortnight, spectators eat their way through nearly two million strawberries, tens of thousands of punnets a day, drowned in thousands of liters of fresh cream, a tradition that has run continuously since the very first Championships in … Read more
This weekend, one champion will lift a golden cup crowned with a pineapple nobody can explain, and another will hold aloft a silver dish named after the wrong goddess. Wimbledon’s trophies are the strangest in major sports, and the strangeness is entirely genuine: the Gentlemen’s Singles Trophy (1887) is topped by a small pineapple whose … Read more
Turn on Wimbledon and you will notice it immediately: every single player, from the defending champions to the first-round qualifiers, dressed head to toe in white. No neon kits, no bold sponsor colorways, no personal flair beyond the occasional one-centimeter trim. In a sport where the other three Grand Slams have become runways for colorful … Read more