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The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC), also known as the All-England Club, based at Wimbledon, London, England, is a private members club. It is best known as the venue for the Wimbledon Championships, the only Grand Slam tennis event still held on grass. Initially a fun amateur event that occupied club members and their friends for a few days each summer, the championships have become far more prominent than the club itself. However, it still operates as a members tennis club, with many courts in use all year round.

The Club has 375 full members, about 100 temporary playing members, and a number of honorary members, including past Wimbledon singles champions. Membership carries with it the right to purchase two tickets for each day of the Wimbledon Championships.

History

Template:Image stack The club was founded in 1868 at the height of a croquet craze as the All England Croquet Club, and held its first croquet competition in 1870. Its original ground was situated off Worple Road, Wimbledon. Croquet was very popular there until the then-infant sport of lawn tennis (a game introduced by Major Walter Clopton Wingfield a year or so prior, and originally called "Sphairistike") was introduced in 1875, when one lawn was set aside for this purpose. The first tennis Championships in men's singles were held in 1877, to raise money for a pony-drawn roller for its croquet lawns, when it changed its name to The All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club. That year at Wimbledon serves were made underarm. The champion, Spencer Gore, opined that "Lawn tennis will never rank among our great games." In 1878 the nets were lowered from 4 feet 9 inches at the posts, to 3 feet 6 inches. In 1882, croquet was dropped from the name, as tennis had become the main activity of the club. But in 1889, it was restored to the club's name, probably for sentimental reasons, and the club's name became The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.

In 1884, the club added Ladies' Singles and Gentlemen's Doubles, and then in 1913 Ladies' Doubles and Mixed Doubles. The popularity of Frenchwoman Suzanne Lenglen was largely responsible for forcing the club to move to larger grounds in 1922, and the club moved to its present site in Church Road, Wimbledon, where its first Championship was "plagued by rain each day". The current Centre Court dates from that year. It has been improved and extended on several occasions. Most recently a sliding roof was added in time for the 2009 Championships. In 1928 the old No. 1 Court opened on the west side of Centre Court. It was replaced with the current No. 1 Court in 1997, and the Broadcast Centre was built at the same time. Shortly afterwards, the Millennium Building, which houses facilities for players, press, officials and members, was built on the site of the old No. 1 Court.

The Church Road site initially extended only as far north as Centre Court. In 1967 the All England Club purchased 11 acres to the north. This was leased to the New Zealand Sports and Social Club and became known as Aorangi Park (Aorangi means "Cloud Piercer", and is the Māori part of Aoraki/Mount Cook; "Aorangi" is the standard Māori spelling and "Aoraki" is used in the Māori dialect in the vicinity of the mountain).It is most commonly known as 'Henman Hill' because of the popularity of former British tennis player, Tim Henman.Initially the only use that the All England Club itself made of this new land was for car parking during the championships, but in 1981 the New Zealander's lease was terminated, and the club has developed most of the area for its own purposes.

The All England Club, through its subsidiary The All England Lawn Tennis Ground plc, issues debentures to tennis fans every five years to raise funds for capital expenditure. Each debenture provides a pair of tickets for each day of the tournament for five years. Only debenture holders are legally permitted to sell on their tickets to third parties.

Angela Barrett, nee Mortimer, who won the Ladies title at Wimbledon in 1961 and became a member of the club, described it in the 1980s by saying: "We do stick with tradition here; we haven't ever lowered our standards. For instance, this isn't a place you bring children. But should you, they're always quite well-behaved. The message gets through."

The club's "exclusivity" included its not allowing any black tennis player to play there prior to 1951, and no Jewish tennis player being able to claim it as their home until 1952. According to Angela Buxton, the Jewish former British Wimbledon doubles champion, it also has led to her exclusion. Buxton said in 2004, reflecting on the fact that the All England Club, almost 50 years after Buxton's 1956 Wimbledon triumph with Althea Gibson and, had still not invited Buxton to join: "I think the anti-Semitism is still there. The mere fact that I'm not a member is a full sentence that speaks for itself." Buxton told New York Post reporter Marc Berman that she had been on the "waiting list" since she applied in the 1950s. The Chairman of the Club appeared on television, and when asked about it said that he would have to look into it, and couldn't comment without more information. "I wish it still wasn't such an elite sport," Buxton told Berman. "I wish we could bring it down to a common baseline. It's going that way. It's still not there." After Gibson and Buxton won the doubles at Wimbledon, one British national newspaper reported their success under the headline, "Minorities Win". "It was in very small type," said Buxton, "lest anyone should see it".

The club will be the venue for the tennis competition at the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Facilities

The club currently has 19 tournament courts, 16 other grass courts, which serve as competitors' practice courts during the championship, and several clay and hard courts, which are hidden under temporary stands and marquees during the tournament. The grass courts can be used from May until September. The grass is cut to 8 mm, and rye grass is used for its strength.

The largest court is Centre Court, which usually hosts the finals of the main singles and doubles events at the championships. Centre Court, built in 1922, currently seats 15,000 - expanded from 14,000 following redevelopment in 2007-08 (spatially the expansion is greater than those numbers imply, as seats have been widened), and is the fourth-largest tennis stadium in the world through 2009. New for 2009 is a retractable roof. The club installed a retractable roof on Centre Court which was completed in May 2009. It is a "folding concertina" made of 5,200 square metres of a translucent waterproof fabric that allow natural light to reach the grass, and opens/closes in under 10 minutes. Redevelopment work commenced in 2006 and Centre Court had no roof at all in place for the duration of the 2007 Championships.

The other 'show court' is No. 1 Court, built in 1997, which holds around 11,500 people and occasionally plays host to Davis Cup matches (Centre Court being preserved for the Wimbledon Championship). A new No. 2 Court with 4,000 seats was first used at the 2009 Championships. The old No.2 Court was renamed No.3 Court in 2009, and will be rebuilt after the 2009 championships.

The club also houses the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum, and it still has a croquet lawn, but it is too small for top-level competitions.

The Championships

Among the features that differentiate The Championships from the other Grand Slams are that they are played on grass courts, they require the players to wear white, and they schedule a day off on the middle Sunday of the tournament. The winner of the men's singles at The Championships receives a silver trophy inscribed with the words: "The All England Lawn Tennis Club Single Handed Champion of the World".

The Championships attract attendance of 450,000 people. The funds that the club generates from running The Championships are used to develop tennis in Great Britain. The Championships are run by a Committee of Management that consists of 12 club members and seven nominees of The Lawn Tennis Association (LTA). The 2009 Committee included the following club members: Timothy Dewe Phillips CBE (Chairman), P.G.H. Brook, J.S. Dunningham, R.M. Gradon, I.L. Hewitt, Miss. D.A. Jevans, Mrs. A.S. Jones MBE, Mr. M.A. King, Mr. T.H. Henman OBE, G.M. Newton, J.C. Tatum, and K.F. Weatherley. Phillips indicated in November 2008 that The Championships would weather the then-current economic crisis better than other sporting events, because of long-term contracts and its popularity.

In 2003 a long-standing tradition of Centre Court players bowing or curtseying to the Royal Box was scrapped by order of the Duke of Kent, President of the club since 1969, who deemed it an anachronism in modern times. The only exception would be if the Queen or the Prince of Wales were to attend.

In 2006 Phillips said that paying men and women equal prize money at The Championships was something they "fundamentally don’t think would be fair on the men." But the following year Phillips announced that The Championships would pay men and women equal prize money in 2007 for the first time. The decision overturned more than a century of inequality in pay, and brought the tournament more into line with the other three annual grand slam tennis events, which all pay men and women champions the same amount. Philipps insisted that the club had not caved in to pressure from politicians, female tennis players, and women’s rights campaigners.

See also

• The Championships, Wimbledon
• The Wimbledon Effect
• Queen's Club - London's second most famous tennis club
• Deford, Frank, "A Club Like No Other: Small wonder there's only one Wimbledon. After all, the tournament is run by the singular All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club", Sports Illustrated, 6/21/82, accessed 7/8/09

References

1. Andreff, Wladimire, and Szymański, Stefan, "Handbook on the economics of sport", Edward Elgar Publishing (2006), ISBN 1843766086, 9781843766087
2. "The All England Lawn Tennis Club," Wimbledon.org, accessed 6/29/09
3. "Anyone for a game of sphairistiké?", The Northern Echo, 6/27/09, accessed 7/8/09
4. "A Brief History of Wimbledon", The Times of India, 6/19/08, accessed 7/8/09
5. Albert, Jim, and Ruud, H. Koning, "Statistical Thinking in Sports", p. 217, CRC Press (2007), ISBN 1584888687, 9781584888680
6. Siddons, Larry, "A Rich History to Celebrate", The Free-Lance Star, 6/21/86, accessed 7/8/09
7. Herbert William Wrangham Wilberforce, Hillyard "Lawn tennis", p. 5, G. Bell (1908)
8. "About Wimbledon Championships", China Radio International English, 6/17/05, accessed 7/8/09
9. "Women's fashion hits the courts", BBC, 6/19/98, accessed 7/8/09
10. Worrall, Simon, "Mice and Mist and Mirthlessnis Mix at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club", Salon, 7/8/98, accessed 7/9/09
11. "About Wimbledon Debentures," The All England Lawn Tennis Ground, accessed 6/29/09
12. Deford, Frank, "A Club Like No Other: Small wonder there's only one Wimbledon. After all, the tournament is run by the singular All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club", Sports Illustrated, 6/21/82, accessed 7/8/09
13. Siriginia, Saraswathi, "Wimbledon Rewind: How Angela Buxton and Althea Gibson Broke Barriers in 1956," Bleacher Report, 6/16/09, accessed 6/29/09
14. Hoye, Russell, Smith, Aaron, Nicholson, Natthew, Stewart, Bob, and Westerbeek, Hans, "Sport Management-principles and applications: Case Study: The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club and the Wimbledon Tennis Championship", p. 197, Butterworth-Heinemann (2009), ISBN 075068755X, 9780750687553
15. Schoenfeld, Bruce, "The Match: Althea Gibson & Angela Buxton: How Two Outsiders--One Black, the Other Jewish--Forged a Friendship and Made Sports History" (2004), pp. 279-80, Amistad, ISBN-10: 0060526521, ISBN-13: 978-0060526528, accessed 6/29/09
16. "Buxton, Angela," Jews in Sports, accessed 6/29/09
17. Slater, Robert, "Great Jews in Sports," Jonathan David Publishers, 2005, ISBN-10: 0824604539, ISBN-13: 978-0824604530
18. Giles, Juanita, "No Jews allowed: UAE bows to 'neighborhood' pressure," The Hook, 2/26/09, accessed 6/29/09
19. Henderson, Jon and O'Donnell, Matthew , "Angela Buxton & Althea Gibson," Connections: Hidden British Memories, 7/8/01, accessed 6/29/09
20. Wimbledon.org
21. Bletchly, Rachael, "The Wonders of Wimbledon Fortnight", People, 6/24/07, accessed 7/8/09
22. "The Championships, Wimbledon", Bleacher Report, 6/29/09, accessed 7/8/09
23. "About Wimbledon - Behind the scenes, Long Term Plan, How the roof works," Wimbledon.org, accessed 6/29/09
24. Fendrich, Howard, "Like Federer, Venus seeks sixth Wimbledon title", The Canadian Press, 6/21/09, accessed 7/8/09
25. Rigby, Christopher, "1000 Facts on Sport", p. 136, Miles Kelly Publishing (2004), ISBN 1842363972, 9781842363973
26. "About Wimbledon - Behind the scenes: The All England Lawn Tennis Club", Wimbledon.org, 7/8/09
27. "Leftovers: All England, all the time", Las Vegas Review-Journal, 11/20/08, accessed 7/8/09
28. Parsons, John, and Davies, Caroline, "Wimbledon abandons the Royal Box curtsey", The Telegraph , 4/30/03, accessed 7/8/09
29. "Wimbledon serves up equal pay for women", Daily Times, 2/23/07, accessed 7/8/09

External links

• Club page on the Wimbledon Championships site
• "Wimbledon: Facts, Figures, and Fun," by Cameron Brown

51°26′1.48″N 0°12′50.63″W / 51.4337444°N 0.2140639°W / 51.4337444; -0.2140639

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