A youthful 57-year-old, he spent the bulk of his career working for Walt Disney. Finally, the meandering, complex tennis calendar will be shaken up and rationalised.Ī principal instigator of all this is Etienne de Villiers, who became ATP executive chairman and president in January. The big tournaments, meanwhile, will start with a lot more razzmatazz on Sundays, rather than Mondays, the entry will be reduced from 64 to 56 players, and five-set finals will be abolished outside of the grand-slams. The Association of Tennis Professionals, which runs the men’s tour, plans to change the early stages of lesser tournaments to a round-robin group system instead of the knock-out format. Then if the pairs are level at one set all, a “championship tie-break” (first to 10 points, instead of seven) decides the match.Īnd there is more to come in the next two years. The advantage point has been scrapped and the receiving pair determine which side of the court the deciding deuce point is served from. The men’s doubles game, outside of the big four grand-slam events, has been revolutionised. This year the “challenge system” was introduced whereby at some tournaments players can contest a certain number of line calls during a match using the Hawk-Eye instant-replay technology. Images: RLD, Creative Commons and SouthEasternStar via Flickr.The casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that not much changes in tennis – Roger Federer wins virtually every tournament he enters and Maria Sharapova grabs the publicity whether she is winning or not.īut beneath the headlines about Federer and the struggle between Sharapova, Justin Henin-Hardenne and Amélie Mauresmo to dominate the women’s game, tennis is undergoing more radical change than any other leading global sport. Want to know more? Read our previous posts or have a look at our Wimbledon Day Tour with Lunch. The players eat around 15,000 bananas, 142,000 portions of English strawberries are consumed and 28,000 bottles of Lanson Champagne (official supplier – Wimbledon do not accept sponsors) are drunk. Food for ThoughtĮach year 207,000 meals are served, 100,000 pints of draught beer and lager are poured and 230,000 glasses of Pimm’s are gulped down. On average, 54,250 balls are used during the tournament, and 250 ball boys and ball girls are employed. The yellow balls that we’ve come to associate with the sport were actually white until 1986, but umpires struggled to see them. World War One and World War Two were to blame for the tournament’s interruptions between 1915 – – 45. Martina Hingis was also 15 when she became the youngest Wimbledon doubles champion in 1996. In 1887 Charlotte Dod became the youngest player ever to win a Wimbledon singles event at the age of 15. The youngest ever player at Wimbledon was 13 year old Austrian Mita Klima, in 1907. The 2015 Wimbledon singles champions will win £1.88 million, an increase of £120,000 on last year. To put that in perspective, Roger Federer earned £655,000 for winning the 2006 title, while Amelie Mauresmo only took home £625,000. Women only recently started getting paid the same as their male counterparts, after equal pay was introduced in 2007. We have come up with some weird and wonderful Wimbledon facts for you! It’s almost that time of year again and Wimbledon is just around the corner, are you excited? Ever wondered how many glasses of Pimms are consumed at Wimbledon? What about the amount of bananas the players eat? This year, we’ve decided to look at another side of the world’s favourite tennis tournament.
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