Another great year of tennis history; Wimbledon 2024

BY KRISHNA MISTRY

Wimbledon began on June 24^th, 2024, and is anticipated to end on July 14^th, 2024. Wimbledon is an annual tennis tournament held in London where players from all around the world come to compete. Uniquely, Wimbledon is played on grass courts, while competitions like the US Open or the Australian Open are played on hard or clay surfaces.

Wimbledon first began in 1877, a one hundred and forty-seven-year-old tournament. To be invited to this tournament, you must be in the top one hundred and four. If twenty-eight players decline to attend, they will look at players in the top one-hundred and five to one-hundred and thirty-two, as they will try to fill in the spots. This continues until they fill up all the places.

There are one-hundred and twenty-eight tennis players that compete in Wimbledon, eight being wild card winners. Some players are given wild cards to the tournament. Players who receive a wild card are players who normally wouldn’t qualify for the tournament due to their ranking.

This is how Wimbledon determines which tennis players are invited. In Wimbledon, there are five events that tennis players compete in: women’s singles, men’s singles, women’s doubles, men’s doubles, and mixed doubles. To compete at Wimbledon, players must obey the strict rules of equipment and attire.

Wimbledon players must follow certain rules to play in the tournament, a few rules being: competitors must be dressed in tennis attire that is almost entirely white, white does not include off-white, or cream, and there should be no solid mass, or panel of colouring. They must wear white to compete, which includes: their clothes, the accessories such as hats or headbands, and their shoes must be white including the shoe laces. Detailed rules can be seen on the Wimbledon official website. Some of these rules have stayed the same since the beginning of Wimbledon.

A website by the name of SportsHandle has been looking at players from 1877-2023 from both the men’s singles division and the women’s singles division. Throughout the years, Wimbledon winners have been born in the United States in both the men’s and women’s divisions. Most winners have been right-handed players, and there have been seventeen men’s champions and nineteen women’s champions. One thing that has not changed in the many decades of Wimbledon is the use of Wilson rackets. Wilson is a trusted brand used by many professional tennis players.

Now that Wimbledon has started, you can see many tennis players in action. Many well-renowned players are competing such as: Sinner Jannik from Italy, Iga Świątek from Poland, Coco Gauff from the United States of America, and Djokovic Novak from Serbia.

These players are the top two players in the men’s and women’s single divison. They have been playing for many years to get to where they are now. Currently, Jannik is ranked number one in the men’s division. He started playing around the age of thirteen, approximately nine years ago. Unfortunately, Jannik lost the quarter-final against Daniil Medvedev, a Russian player.

Like Jannik, Świątek is also ranked first in the women’s division. Świątek began pursuing tennis as a career at the age of fifteen and has been playing for eight years. Unfortunately, Świątek lost the third round, disqualifying her from the tournment.

Gauff is ranked second in the women’s division and has achieved amazing things in her career. Gauff also lost, disqualifying her from the tournament as well. Much like Gauff, Novak is also ranked second in the men’s divison. He will be playing against Alex de Minaur, an Australian player, in the quarter-finals on July 9^th, 2024 at 9:45 AM EST.

Tune in to Wimbledon to see who wins this year’s title. If you wanna see more tennis and sports action this summer, don’t miss the 2024 Paris Olympics happening on July 26^th, 2024 – August 11^th, 2024.