1. The Brits discovered tennis in India and (like so many other parts of Indian culture) they stole it and made it their own. But instead calling it something effete like “tennis”, the Brits gave it the infinitely more masculine names “Battledore” and “Shuttlecock.”
2. The Wimbledon tournament started in 1877 as a way for the tennis club to raise money to replace a broken piece of lawn equipment called a “pony roller” (which sounds like a dance move or a nickname for a guy who’s into pocket gays). The club members needed a whopping 10 pounds (about $15) to fix the pony roller which pressed down the grass on the tennis courts and so they held a 4-day tournament and charged each person 1 shilling (about 8 cents) to attend. In the end, they raised about 17 pounds. The first winner of Wimbledon was 27-year-old Spencer William Gore who — balding, bearded, and dressed in English finery — looked about 50 years old.
3. Not to be shown up by the Irish who had planned to let women start playing in their national tennis tournament, Wimbledon started admitting female players in 1884 (seven years after their first game). The prizes for the women included a silver hand mirror, a hand brush, and a flower basket — very practical, non-sexist prizes for demure ladies — just the sorts of things a champion like Martina Navratilova would want.
Female players also had to wear about 10 extra pounds of clothing to play tennis including a corset, a white gown, and a weighty ball apron. Women couldn’t breathe normally in corsets or lean down to pick up balls so they regularly passed out on the court from heat exhaustion. Luckily, the club kept smelling salts on hand to revive fainting players and keep them playing like robots.
4. The word “love” in tennis (which refers to a score of zero) comes from the French word for egg (l’oeuf), since a zero resembles the ovoid shape of a chicken embryo. It’s kinda weird that a huevo signifies nothing in the sport and even wierder that the French don’t use the word when playing tennis either.
5. Lesbian tennis champion Billie Jean King won the first Wimbledon ladies title when the tournament went from an invitational into a professional sporting event in 1961. She has since been succeeded by amazing tennis lesbian Martina Navrátilová.
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Mike in Asheville, nee "in Brooklyn"
With such snarky attitude and contempt for tennis, why on Earth did you bother/waste time visiting Wimbledon? Perhaps you would have had a better time visiting the Tower of London where you could have laughed hysterically while viewing Anne Boleyn’s jewels while reading the recounting of her execution.
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Certainly this year’s tournament was not engaging. Rafa Nadal and Serena Williams so dominate play. The Isner/Mahut match was amazing; the Williams sisters’ loss in doubles shocking; Nadal manhandling Andy Murray unexpected; still an enjoyable tournament to watch.
NadalFan
I love Wimbledon.I can not wait to start.my favorite is Nadal.