59 Fun Facts About Wimbledon

Wimbledon is the only one of the four Grand Slam tournaments still played on which surface?

Grass was once the surface of three of the four majors, but the American and Australian championships both abandoned it, leaving Wimbledon alone since 1988.

The first Wimbledon, in 1877, funded repairs to what?

A roller, pulled by a pony: the club's had broken, so it charged 22 men a guinea each to enter a tournament, and about 200 people paid a shilling to watch the final.

Which food is traditionally eaten by spectators at Wimbledon?

Strawberries and cream: the pairing is credited to Cardinal Wolsey, whose kitchens are said to have served it at Hampton Court, a few miles from the courts, in Henry VIII's day.

What colour must players' clothing be at Wimbledon?

Almost entirely white is the rule's own wording: off-white and cream are banned and coloured trim may be no wider than a centimetre, though women may now wear dark undershorts.

Which firm has supplied every Wimbledon ball since 1902, the longest sponsorship in sport?

Slazenger has supplied the balls since 1902; they stayed white until 1986, when Wimbledon switched to yellow so that viewers at home could follow them more easily.

Which two colours are Wimbledon's traditional club colours?

Dark green and purple were adopted in 1909 because the club's original colours turned out to be almost identical to those of the Royal Marines.

By what time must play stop each night under Wimbledon's curfew?

11 pm is a planning condition the local council set when it approved Centre Court's roof and lights; in 2012 one match was allowed to run until 11.02 pm, and the council called it common sense.

What is the official name of the Wimbledon bank better known as Henman Hill?

Aorangi Terrace takes its name from Aorangi Park, land the club once leased to a New Zealand sports club; Aorangi is the Maori name for Mount Cook.

Which two men's warm-up tournaments start two weeks before Wimbledon does?

Queen's Club and Halle share the same week in London and Germany; since 2015 Wimbledon has started a week later, giving players three weeks rather than two to adjust after Paris.

Which Wimbledon day was traditionally a rest day with no scheduled play until 2022?

The middle Sunday was kept free until 2022; rain forced play on it only four times, and the first, in 1991, became 'People's Sunday', with cheap unreserved seats on the show courts.

Which player, then ranked 125th, is the only man to win the Wimbledon singles title as a wild card?

Goran Ivanišević had lost three Wimbledon finals before 2001; rain pushed this one to a third Monday, when a raucous crowd saw him finally win it two months short of his 30th birthday.

Who is the youngest man ever to win the Wimbledon singles title?

Boris Becker was 17, unseeded and ranked only 20th when he became the first German man to win the title in 1985, and he showed it was no fluke by keeping it a year later.

Which woman holds the all-time record with nine Wimbledon singles titles?

Martina Navratilova won six of the nine in a row from 1982 to 1987, and was still winning at Wimbledon in 2003, when she took the mixed doubles at 46.

Which man had won a record eight Wimbledon singles titles by the end of 2025?

Roger Federer took his eighth title in 2017 without losing a set in the whole tournament, 14 years after winning his first.

Whose 2013 victory ended Britain's 77-year wait for a men's singles champion at Wimbledon?

Andy Murray beat Novak Djokovic in straight sets, a year after leaving Centre Court in tears as the beaten finalist.

Who was the last British woman to win the Wimbledon singles, in the centenary year of 1977?

Virginia Wade was 31 and playing her 16th Wimbledon when she finally won it, watched by Queen Elizabeth II on a rare visit in her Silver Jubilee year.

Which player won 20 Wimbledon titles between 1961 and 1979 across singles, doubles and mixed doubles?

Billie Jean King's 1968 singles title was the first to carry prize money: she received £750 to the men's champion's £2,000, a gap she spent years campaigning to close.

Which player won five consecutive Wimbledon singles titles from 1976 to 1980?

Björn Borg sealed the fifth in a 1980 final famous for the 18-16 fourth-set tiebreak he lost, before he steadied himself to win the deciding set 8-6.

Which American won seven Wimbledon singles titles from 1993 to 2000?

Pete Sampras lost only one match at Wimbledon in that span, a 1996 quarter-final against Richard Krajicek, who went on to take the title himself.

Which amateur-era champion won Wimbledon seven times, six of them in a row, in the 1880s?

William Renshaw and his twin Ernest drew such crowds that the surge in the game's popularity in those years became known as the 'Renshaw Rush'.

Who won the first-ever Wimbledon final in 1877, beating William Marshall in 48 minutes?

Spencer Gore preferred cricket and doubted the new game would last; he lost his title the very next year and never won it again.

Who was the first Black man to win the Wimbledon singles title, in 1975?

Arthur Ashe, seeded sixth and nearly 32, had never beaten Jimmy Connors, yet took the first two sets of the final 6-1, 6-1 against the overwhelming favourite.

Which American, among the first Black Wimbledon competitors in 1951, won the title in 1957 and 1958?

Althea Gibson, the first Black champion at Wimbledon, was handed the 1957 trophy by Queen Elizabeth II, who was making her first visit to the Championships.

Which former table tennis world champion won Wimbledon from 1934 to 1936?

Fred Perry won the world table tennis title in 1929 before switching sports; after his third Wimbledon win, no British man lifted the trophy again for 77 years.

Who in 2023 became the first unseeded woman to win the Wimbledon singles title?

Markéta Vondroušová was ranked 42nd and had not won a WTA Tour title since 2017, yet she took the final in straight sets.

The longest match in tennis history, at Wimbledon in 2010, ended with what fifth-set score?

70-68 was reached on the third day: darkness had stopped play at 59-59 the evening before, and John Isner finally broke Nicolas Mahut after 11 hours and 5 minutes.

Where on the grounds was the 11-hour Isner-Mahut marathon played?

Court 18 now carries a plaque to the match; its scoreboard had only been programmed to count as far as 47-47, so it froze there and then went dark.

Since 2022, what happens when the final set of a Wimbledon match reaches 6-6?

A first-to-10 tiebreak is played at 6-6 in the deciding set of every Grand Slam; Wimbledon had first capped final sets at 12-12 in 2019, after a 2018 semi-final ran to 26-24.

What is the ladies' singles trophy at Wimbledon called?

The Venus Rosewater Dish is a silver salver covered in mythological figures, with Temperance at its centre; it never leaves the club, so the champion takes home a three-quarter-size replica.

Which small gold fruit sits on top of the gentlemen's singles trophy?

A pineapple tops the lid of the silver-gilt cup first presented in 1887; the trophy itself never leaves the club, so each champion takes home a three-quarter-size replica.

Which Australian won the first open Wimbledon, in 1968, taking £2,000 in prize money?

Rod Laver had been barred for five years after turning professional; he came straight back to win the first open Championships, while the women's champion that year received £750.

Which Grand Slam became the first to pay women and men equal prize money, in 1973?

The US Open paid its 1973 singles champions $25,000 each; Wimbledon and the French Open were the last of the four majors to follow, 34 years later.

Wimbledon was cancelled in 2020 for the first time since which event?

The Second World War had stopped the Championships from 1940 to 1945; the 2020 losses were cushioned by pandemic insurance the club had bought every year since the SARS outbreak of 2003.

What hit Centre Court on 11 October 1940?

A German bomb struck a corner of the competitors' stand; it cost 1,200 seats and could not be repaired until 1947, so the first post-war Championships went ahead around the damage.

Which political movement was behind a 1913 attempt to set fire to the Wimbledon grounds?

The suffragettes were waging an arson campaign for the vote; a woman caught in the grounds with paraffin and wood shavings refused to give her name and was jailed for two months.

Wimbledon left its original ground beside the railway in 1922 for a new home on which road?

Church Road was seen as a financial gamble at about £140,000, but the old ground held only 8,000 and the crowds had outgrown it; King George V opened the new Centre Court.

Which other sport appears beside tennis in the full name of the club that stages Wimbledon?

Croquet came first: the club was founded in 1868 to play it, but tennis took over so completely that croquet was dropped from the name in 1882, then restored in 1899.

Which show court, since renamed, was nicknamed the 'Graveyard of Champions'?

The old No. 2 Court saw so many champions knocked out early, Andre Agassi and Martina Hingis among them, that the nickname stuck until the court was renumbered in 2009.

Rufus, a Harris's hawk hired by Wimbledon in 2008, was put to work scaring which birds away from the courts?

Pigeons like to settle around the courts, so Rufus was flown over the grounds to keep them off; by 2025 he had held the job for 17 years, and worries about who would succeed him made the national news.

Since 1969, Wimbledon's ball boys and girls have been drawn from where?

Local schools supply the applicants, who have an average age of 15 and must pass written tests before working in teams of six, one hour on court and one hour off.

Which poet's lines about meeting 'Triumph and Disaster' are inscribed above the players' entrance to Centre Court?

Rudyard Kipling wrote them in 'If—': players walk out beneath the advice to meet with Triumph and Disaster 'and treat those two impostors just the same'.

What replaced Wimbledon's human line judges entirely from the 2025 Championships?

Hawk-Eye Live electronic calling ended 147 years of line judges at Wimbledon; the chair umpire stayed, and a new role of 'match assistant' was created to escort players off court.

Since 2003, players entering Centre Court bow to the Royal Box only if who is present?

The King or the Prince of Wales must be in the Royal Box for players to bow or curtsy; the Duke of Kent, as the club's president, scrapped the custom for other royals in 2003.

On 1 July 1967, Wimbledon featured in which piece of British broadcasting history?

The UK's first official colour TV broadcast was live coverage of Wimbledon on BBC Two; even so, the tournament kept its white balls for another 19 years.

Which fruit-squash brand sponsored Wimbledon from 1935 to 2021?

Robinsons barley water began as a mix of barley crystals, lemon juice and sugar that Eric Smedley Hodgson handed to players; it proved so popular that it sat by the umpire's chair for 86 years.

Which drink has had its own bar at Wimbledon since 1971?

Pimm's, a gin-based fruit cup served long with lemonade, fruit and mint, was first sold in a London oyster bar; its first Wimbledon bar opened in 1971 and it has been a fixture of the fortnight ever since.

Which player, whose name is now a clothing brand, was Wimbledon's first men's top seed in 1927?

René Lacoste headed the first merit-based seedings alongside Helen Wills, yet lost in the semi-finals; seeding in 1924 had only kept players from the same country apart.

Which sports magazine donated the 25-guinea silver challenge cup for the very first Wimbledon?

The Field gave its name to the Field Cup, which a three-time champion later won outright; the club made sure the trophy it bought in 1887 could never become a winner's property.

Which player's outburst at a Wimbledon umpire in 1981 gave tennis the catchphrase 'You cannot be serious'?

John McEnroe was disputing a serve called out in his first-round match; he went on to win his first Wimbledon title that fortnight and later made the line the title of his autobiography.

Which player won Olympic singles gold at Wimbledon in 2012, weeks after winning the Wimbledon title there?

Serena Williams lost just one game in the Olympic final, four weeks after her fifth Wimbledon singles title; the Games brought Olympic tennis back to the club for the first time since 1908.

Which player won five Wimbledon singles titles between 2000 and 2008?

Venus Williams won in 2000, 2001, 2005, 2007 and 2008, and had to beat her younger sister across the net in the last of those finals.

Which Russian won the 2004 Wimbledon singles title at the age of 17?

Maria Sharapova, seeded 13th, had never been past a Grand Slam quarter-final before that fortnight, yet beat the top seed and two-time defending champion in straight sets.

Until 1921, what privilege did the defending champion enjoy at Wimbledon?

Automatic entry to the final was known as the challenge round: the holder sat out the draw and met the winner fresh, which is how early champions piled up titles until it was scrapped in 1922.

Who played the first match held entirely under the Centre Court roof, on 29 June 2009?

Murray and Wawrinka finished at 10.38 pm under the lights, more than an hour later than Centre Court had ever seen play; the roof had first been closed earlier that day, midway through Mauresmo v Safina.

Which runner-up wept on the Duchess of Kent's shoulder after losing the 1993 final, then won the title in 1998?

Jana Novotná had held a point for a 5-1 lead in the final set before Steffi Graf swept the last five games; the Duchess assured her she could still win it, and five years later she did.

In which London district does Wimbledon hold its qualifying matches, 3.6 miles from the club?

Roehampton is where hopefuls must win three rounds in a row to claim one of the 16 qualifying places in each singles draw; ball boys and girls first worked there in 2022.

From the 1940s to the 1960s, Wimbledon's ball boys came from homes run by which charity?

Barnardo's homes supplied Wimbledon's ball boys for two decades; ball girls arrived only in 1977, and were not seen on Centre Court until 1985.

What did Wimbledon's original Worple Road ground become after the club moved away in 1922?

A girls' school playing field: Wimbledon High School still plays sport on the four acres where the first Championships and the 1908 Olympic tennis were held.

Who won the 2008 Wimbledon men's final, a five-set epic that finished in near darkness after two rain delays?

Rafael Nadal won 9-7 in the fifth set at a quarter past nine, after 4 hours 48 minutes of play, ending the defending champion's run of five straight titles.