Wimbledon - The Ultimate Tennis

Wimbledon Tennis Championship is the oldest tennis tournament in the world. The venue for the great tournament is the All England Club, where the tournament has been held since 1877. Wimbledon is one of the 4 Grand Slam tournaments and is famous for its traditional values. Wimbledon is the only major tournament still held on grass. The tournament is held over 2 weeks starting the last week of June and concluding in the first week of July. The Wimbledon traditions include compulsory white dress for players, eating of strawberries and cream by spectators and the Royal Patronage. The tournament is so prestigious that some of the greats like Ivan Lendle, who have not won the tournament has stated that he is ready to give up few other titles in return on 1 Wimbledon Title.

The tournament has mainly 5 main sections viz the Gentlemen’s Singles, Ladies’s Singles, Men’s Doubles, Women’s Doubles and also the Mixed Doubles. In addition, many invitational categories like Veterans’ and age group tournament are also held. The championship draw is made according to seedings and the men’s championship is played as best of 5 sets and the ladies best of 3. Over the years, Wimbledon has seen many greats turning up and winning the title here. The major matches are held on the Centre Court and Court no 1, and there are a total of 17 courts at the All England Club.

Over the years, the men’s tournament has always thrown up tough challenge and till date, the most number of titles have been won by William Renshaw(Britain), Pete Sampras( USA) and Roger Federer(Switzerland). Some of the other notable champions include Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg and Novac Djokovic. The youngest ever winner of the men’s championship is Boris Becker of Germany at 17 years. The ladies section has seen Martina Navratilova (USA) with the most(9) titles closely followed by Hellen Wills Moody (USA) with 8 titles. They are closely followed by Steffi Graf(Germany) with 7 titles. The record for the youngest champion is held by Martina Hingis (Switzerland) at 16 years. Though India has never tasted success in both the singles categories, there have been some chamions in the Doubles section in the form of Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathy and Sania Mirza in the modern era.

The 2016 Wimbledon championship was held between 29^th June to 12^th July, 2015 and this was the 129^th edition. The men’s title was won by Novac Djokovic, who prevailed over one of the all time greats Roger Federer after a tough 4 set match. The Ladies’ title was won by Serena Williams, who beat first time finalist Gabrine Muguruza. The 2016 championship was particularly sweet for India as we saw 3 champions in 3 different categories. Leander Paes and Sania Mirza rode some swiss partnership connection in the form of Martina Hingis to win in Mixed and Ladies’ Doubles titles respectively. Delhi boy Sumit Nagal made it 3 for India by winning the boys’ doubles title.

While the legacy of the Wimbledon Tennis Championship continues, we as Indians hope that the future will throw up many champions from our great nation in all the categories.