The Championships, Wimbledon — never “the Wimbledon Open” — is the oldest tennis tournament in the world, first played in 1877, and the only Grand Slam still contested on grass. It runs for a fortnight from late June at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in south-west London.
The rules of the place
Wimbledon is defined by its refusals to change.
- All white. The dress code applies to players and is enforced with genuine severity — a single trim of colour must be no wider than one centimetre, and that includes underwear. Players have been made to change shoes mid-tournament. The one recent concession, in 2023, allows women to wear dark undershorts, after players raised the obvious problem with white clothing.
- Grass. Every other Grand Slam has moved to hard court or clay. Grass produces a faster, lower bounce and rewards serve-and-volley play, and the courts are grown, cut and rolled to a specification measured in millimetres.
- No play on the middle Sunday — abandoned only recently, after decades of tradition.
The Queue
Wimbledon is the last major tournament where ordinary people can buy same-day tickets, and the mechanism is gloriously British: you join The Queue — capitalised, official, with its own published code of conduct.
People camp overnight in Wimbledon Park, are issued a numbered queue card, and are shepherded by stewards. Tents, camaraderie and breakfast vans are all part of it. A few hundred Centre Court tickets are released each morning, and thousands of grounds passes.
Leaving your place to go to the pub is forbidden. Queue-jumping is unthinkable. The whole thing is a national exercise in the thing Britain does best, and many people consider the queue as enjoyable as the tennis.
Strawberries and cream
Around two million strawberries are eaten each fortnight, served with cream in a standard portion at a price the club has deliberately held down for years. They are picked in Kent the day before and arrive at dawn. Pimm’s is the other essential order.
Henman Hill
The grass bank beside Court One where ticketless spectators watch on a big screen. Named for Tim Henman, renamed Murray Mound during Andy Murray’s career, and officially neither. It is free with a grounds pass and one of the best atmospheres at the whole event.
The 77-year wait
No British man won the singles title between Fred Perry in 1936 and Andy Murray in 2013 — a drought that became a national running joke and an annual exercise in hope followed by disappointment. Murray won again in 2016. Virginia Wade won the women’s title in 1977, in the Queen’s Silver Jubilee year, which is the sort of timing the British find deeply satisfying.