Wimbledon endures not because it’s the most prestigious tournament, but because it’s the one that most feels like it belongs to everyone—from royals to regular fans. The groundskeepers tend it like family. And generation after generation of fans gets to inherit it like one.
For a lifelong tennis player and fan, it was a kind of pilgrimage. I bent down to touch the grass and hoped a few shards of green would rub off on my palm so I could tuck them into a vial. Will Brierley, Lead Groundsperson at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, showed me how they mow, trim, massage, roll, and paint some of the world’s most famous tennis courts.
The groundskeepers, who don’t really follow tennis, spoke about each court as if it were a sibling or cousin—some demanding and temperamental, others easy to maintain. Some, they joke, they can tend with their eyes closed. They’re exhausted by the time the tournament starts, especially if it’s been raining. They know these courts as family.
Unlike any other major sporting event, Wimbledon still allows fans to queue for a chance to buy same-day show-court seats at face value, or enter the grounds for as little as £33. This creates an atmosphere in which families can afford to attend and celebrate in community.
I saw multi-generational groups, or groups of 60-something gals in hand-embroidered hats who’ve been coming for decades to queue together, picnic on Henman Hill together, and treat the fortnight as an annual retreat.
Over the years, the queue and the tournament became the most sought-after events in the sport’s annual calendar. Fans would give anything to witness the world’s oldest tennis tournament and Centre Court, where greats from Arthur Ashe to Serena Williams to Roger Federer became legends. For the lucky fans attending this year, they’ll witness legends anew as Serena and Venus Williams play doubles together for the first time since 2022—yet another family reunion at Wimbledon.
Most of the groundskeepers don’t particularly follow tennis. They align themselves, first and foremost, with Premier League teams: Liverpool, Arsenal, or Chelsea. They have little investment in who wins the tennis matches. Their only real chatter revolves around which players’ movement styles damage or preserve the grass.
Roger Federer playes at Wimbledon on June 28, 2004 in London, England. —Simon Bruty—Anychance/Getty Images
When I asked Brierley and the team to tell me about the differences between the courts, he pointed at a map on the wall in the clubhouse. They also keep photographs of the courts from past years, records of perfection or near-perfection, as a kind of institutional memory.
Court 2 puts them through the most, and they love it for that. The court sits below ground level, beneath the water table, which means its soil stays wet longer. But it also dries and heats faster than its neighbors, owing to the angles of light.
Wimbledon’s irrigation system runs on a fully computerized grid with laser precision. At night, guard dogs and surveillance teams monitor the grounds year-round, because catastrophe at Wimbledon comes in the form of a two-foot-long fox slinking onto a court and marking its territory. Rufus the hawk handles deterring the pigeons from disrupting play by eating grass seed.
Most tennis players count Wimbledon as their most prized Slam title. It is the “most beautiful tournament, most beautiful court, most beautiful trophy,” as Carlos Alcaraz said after winning in 2024. Three-time Wimbledon men’s singles finalist Andy Roddick has likened the grounds to another world entirely: “I love it. I can’t talk about it in a rational way.”
This has produced upsets, like defending champion Steffi Graf’s loss in the first round in 1994, Rafael Nadal’s second-round loss in 2012, and Novak Djokovic’s third-round loss in 2016. The seedings become suggestions as the players relearn grass for a short burst of their seasons. Spectators get to witness the quirky, mythic sporting event that is Wimbledon.
Wimbledon is where we feel that wonder most acutely, because the stakes are high and the surface is unforgiving and the whole thing feels, somehow, like it’s been handed down—by a groundskeeper who has been working at Wimbledon for decades, or Vicky and Nigel Broad who have been at the front of the queue since John McEnroe was competing in the early 1980s.
The tennis courts themselves are alive. As is everything around them.
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