Wimbledon is evolving: a crib sheet for nailing its talking points with ease

The spotlight is on SW19 in the competition's 150th year
Serena Williams celebrates her win in their ladies' singles final during the Wimbledon Championships in 2016.
EPA

Roll up, roll up for a fortnight of theatrics: besides football coming home, Wimbledon is cantering through its opening stages. You have unearthed your racket, made some hackneyed comment about Pimm’s and formed An Opinion, uninformed, on the respective chances of Federer and Nadal. You are ready.

Indeed, while the World Cup is topsy turvy, you usually know where you are with Wimbledon. The All England Club is shrouded in ritual and lore; while this is part of the magic, it also means eyes narrow at the prospect of novelty.

However, this year, in time for the competition’s 150th year, its tectonic plates are on the move: there are robots and new runners and riders and rows about parental leave.

Wimbledon is evolving — this is your crib sheet for nailing its talking points with aplomb.

Eager tennis fans have pitched up their tents in the legendary Wimbledon queue 
Alex Lentati

Time’s up

Every year there are dark mutters about the scheduling of matches at Wimbledon — chiefly because far more men’s matches are scheduled on Centre and Number 1 courts than women’s matches. Last year it was 58 per cent to 42 per cent in favour of the male game. This means far fewer women’s matches end up on television and fewer female players get their (fair) share of the spotlight.

Expect this issue to flare up again — additionally, this year, veteran player Chris Evert has said that the women’s final should be moved to Sunday, the same day as the men’s final and the last day of the tournament, to give the women the headline spot.

There has also been a tussle over the timing of the men’s final: the match will start at 2pm and will therefore clash with the World Cup final — for now, the All England Club has refused to move the fixture earlier to avoid the competition, though perhaps if Prince Harry (Kane) makes it all the way then the powers-that-be will reconsider.

Fair pay

The question of equal pay has also re-emerged: during the BBC pay maelstrom it was revealed that John McEnroe earned 10 times more than Martina Navratilova for their commentary last year. McEnroe dodged the question deftly, though Navratilova was not so sanguine, telling Panorama that she thought the BBC valued male voices more than women’s. She will be returning this year — tune in to discern any tension.

Return of the boss

US player Serena Williams
AFP/Getty Images

After a year away from tennis having her first baby with husband Alexis Ohanian, seven-time Wimbledon champion Serena Williams is back. Her return has, predictably, been controversial: when she departed on maternity leave she was ranked number one, but in her year off has tumbled down the scale, and is currently at 451 — which should, according to arcane rules, have disqualified her from being seeded, and meant she’d have had to play through the wildcard rounds.

Female players including Maria Sharapova have challenged these rules, which penalise mothers on a technicality. Inevitably some of the up-and-comers who might have faced Williams have been less generous.

Happily, the All England Club ruled in her favour and Williams’s ranking was boosted to seed her for the tournament — haters are gonna seethe with jealousy.

The Brit pack

Andy Murray (Reuters)
REUTERS

Meanwhile, there will be no Andy Murray — the double Wimbledon winner is still recovering from hip surgery and won’t be competing. It’s a blow, though you could get behind Kyle Edmund, currently British men’s number one, and who beat Murray at Eastbourne last month — which might have precipitated the Scotsman’s decision to sit this one out.

Edmund is 23, occasionally referred to as Kedders and has cracked the top 20 after reaching the semi-finals of the Australian Open. On the other hand he only made it to the second round last year and might already have been knocked out by the time you’re reading this. Ditto women’s number one Johanna Konta, who played this morning — though she reached the semis last year and leapfrogged to a career-high ranking of 22.

Rise of the machines

Capturing all the action in SW19 will be Watson, AI technology devised by IBM that will be used for the first time to monitor the facial expressions of the players and crowds with the aim of curating championship highlights.

Watson uses crowd noise, scores and players’ movements to create the highlights packages — each should be ready within five minutes of the end of play. We are assured the machine will not be hoodwinked by the players asking for a towel (“It may be a dramatic movement but it is not interesting,” says the All England Club’s head of digital, Alexandra Willis).

We’ve come a long way from wooden rackets and knee-length pleated tennis skirts.

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