Our favorite tournament of the season, Wimbledon is the oldest and best-known tennis championship in the modern competitive circuit. It’s the oldest tournament in the world, which is why it’s officially called just The Championships – when it started, back in 1877, it was the only one! The grass courts of Wimbledon have made or broken the careers of some of the greatest athletes in tennis, lending the action a significance no true fan can ignore.
For the ramp up to Wimbledon, Sports Illustrated has delivered a handy crib sheet of players to watch this year. In the woman’s competition, our favorite up-and-coming player has to be Li Na:
One of the most exciting things about Li is that she’s proved to be an all-court player, having won the French Open, made the Australian Open final twice and advanced to the Wimbledon quarterfinals twice. But the 31-year-old comes into Wimbledon in a state of flux. She started the year with a bang and looked to be back on track to challenge at the French Open after getting to the final in Stuttgart, Germany, but she lost to an in-form Mattek-Sands in the second round. A deep run at Wimbledon is doable.
Sport has always provided a diplomatic link between cultures. Ping Pong opened China to cultural exchange with the West; would a Wimbledon victory encourage more open relations?
While the French Open has concluded, we feel it’s worth taking a moment from our Wimbledon coverage to discuss the tennis great from whom the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen takes its name. The first truly famous female tennis player, Suzanne “La Divine” Lenglen won thirty-one titles in the course of her career. Among Lenglen’s accomplishments is the fastest Wimbledon victory in the record books – she defeated her 1922 singles final opponent in just twenty-six minutes, while recovering from a devastating pertussis infection.
In 1997 the second court at the Roland Garros Stadium, site of the French Open, was renamed “Court Suzanne Lenglen” in her honour. In addition, the trophy awarded to the winner of the Women’s Singles competition at the French Open is the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen.
Lenglen died too soon, of complications from leukemia, in July of 1938.
While we have no Wimbledon Trophy replicas at QuickTrophy, we do have some very nice metal cup trophies that can be used for your tennis tournament – whether it’s called the Championships or just the Family Games.