Centre Court is a
tennis court
A tennis court is the venue where the sport of tennis is played. It is a firm rectangular surface with a low net stretched across the centre. The same surface can be used to play both doubles and singles matches. A variety of surfaces can be u ...
at the
All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club
The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, also known as the All England Club, based at Church Road, Wimbledon, London, Wimbledon, London, England, is a Gentlemen's club, private members' club. It is best known as the venue for the Wimbledon ...
(also known as the All England Club) and is the main court used in
The Championships at Wimbledon, the third annual
Grand Slam
Grand Slam most often refers to:
* Grand Slam (tennis), one player or pair winning all four major annual tournaments, or the tournaments themselves
Grand Slam or Grand slam may also refer to:
Games and sports
* Grand slam, winning category te ...
event of the tennis calendar. It is considered the world's most famous tennis court. It incorporates the clubhouse of the All England Club. Its only regular use for play is during the two weeks a year that the Championships take place. Centre Court has a premier box, known as the Royal Box, for use by the
Royal Family
A royal family is the immediate family of kings/queens, emirs/emiras, sultans/ sultanas, or raja/ rani and sometimes their extended family. The term imperial family appropriately describes the family of an emperor or empress, and the term ...
and other distinguished guests. It is the sixth largest tennis-specific stadium in the world by capacity.
A retractable roof was installed in 2009, enabling play to continue during rain and into the night up until a council-imposed curfew of 11:00 pm. Centre Court, along with
No. 1 Court and
No. 2 Court
No. 2 Court is a tennis court at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, Wimbledon, London. Unlike the other three Grand Slam events, Wimbledon does not name its main courts after famous players, choosing instead to use numbers, with the ...
, was also host to the
tennis competition at the
2012 Summer Olympics
The 2012 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XXX Olympiad and also known as London 2012) was an international multi-sport event held from 27 July to 12 August 2012 in London, England, United Kingdom. The first event, the ...
.
History
![Wimbledon 1883, William and Ernest Renshaw](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Wimbledon_1883%2C_William_and_Ernest_Renshaw.jpg)
The name "Centre Court" derives from the location of the principal court at the All England Croquet Club's original site off Worple Road, Wimbledon – where the main court was located in the centre of all the other courts.
For the first
Wimbledon Championship in 1877 a total of 12 courts were available which were laid out in a 3×4 grid and there was no actual centre court. This changed in 1881 when the middle two courts of the middle row were combined to form a Centre Court.
[ The name was kept when the club relocated to its present site at Church Road in 1922.] It was not until a further four courts were added in 1980 that Centre Court's location in the grounds again matched its name.
The initial capacity of the Centre Court is not known. In 1881 temporary covered stands (A, B and C) were erected on three sides of the Centre Court and in 1884 stand A was converted into a permanent stand, to be followed in 1885 by the conversion of stands B and C. In 1886 the three stands were joined at the corners to form a continuous structure. The stands were considerably enlarged in 1906 and in 1909 a new stand B was constructed increasing capacity by 600 seats. In 1914 the seating capacity was increased from 2,300 to 3,500 and this remained unchanged until the move to the new ground at Church Road.
The court suffered from bomb damage during World War II when five 500 lb bombs hit the Centre Court during an air attack in October 1940. 1,200 seats in the stadium were destroyed and although play resumed on time after the war in 1946, the court wasn't fully repaired until 1949.
The original centre court roof from 1922, which partly covers the stands, has been modified several times. In 1979, it was raised by one metre to allow the capacity to be increased by 1,088. Further building work came in 1992 with a replacement of the roof and a modified structure which allowed 3,601 seats to have a clearer view of the court which had previously been restricted by the number of roof supports.
A full retractable roof (see below) was completed in 2009, and capacity increased to 15,000 by adding six rows of seats to the upper tier on the east, north, and west sides. New media facilities, scoreboards including video, and commentary boxes were built to replace those currently in the upper tier. New wider seats were installed and new additional stairs and lifts were added.
Retractable roof
After many years of debate by players, fans, media and officials that often occurred during rain delays, the All England Club finally decided to build a retractable roof
A retractable roof is a roof system designed to roll back the roof of a structure so that the interior of the facility is open to the outdoors. Retractable roofs are sometimes referred to as operable roofs or retractable skylights. The term op ...
to cover the entire court. Building work began with the removal of the existing roof over the stands at the end of the 2006 championships. There was no roof over the stands for the 2007 event, and fixed parts of the new construction were visible the following year. The lack of a roof played a key role in the finish to the now-legendary 2008 Wimbledon men's final, which saw the match end in near-darkness after nearly two hours of rain delays. The completed retractable roof structure was ready for the 2009 Championships, being unveiled in April 2009 and tested with a capacity audience during an exhibition match on 17 May 2009, featuring Andre Agassi
Andre Kirk Agassi ( ; born April 29, 1970) is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. He is an eight-time major champion and an Olympic gold medalist, as well as a runner-up in seven other majors.
Agassi is the second of five men to ach ...
, Steffi Graf
Stefanie Maria Graf ( , ; born 14 June 1969) is a German former professional tennis player. Widely regarded as one of the greatest tennis players of all time, she was ranked world No. 1 for a record 377 weeks and won 22 major singles titles, ...
, Tim Henman
Timothy Henry Henman (born 6 September 1974) is a British former professional tennis player. Henman played a serve-and-volley style of tennis. He was the first British man to reach the singles semifinals of Wimbledon since Roger Taylor in the ...
, and Kim Clijsters
Kim Antonie Lode Clijsters (; born 8 June 1983) is a Belgian former professional tennis player. Clijsters reached the world No. 1 ranking in both singles and doubles, having held both rankings simultaneously in 2003. She won six major titles, ...
(subsequently returning from retirement).
The roof takes up to 10 minutes to close, during which time play is suspended. However, the time to transfer from outside to inside play can be up to 45 minutes while the air-conditioning system acclimatises the nearly 15,000-seat stadium for indoor-grass competition. The tournament rules for the Wimbledon fortnight
A fortnight is a unit of time equal to 14 days (two weeks). The word derives from the Old English term , meaning "" (or "fourteen days," since the Anglo-Saxons counted by nights).
Astronomy and tides
In astronomy, a ''lunar fortnight'' is h ...
dictate that the roof, once closed, must remain closed until the end of the match, so some matches may be completed indoors even though the sun has re-emerged.
The roof was closed for the first time during a competitive Championships match at about 4:40 pm on Monday 29 June 2009, during the fourth round Ladies Singles match between Amélie Mauresmo
Amélie Simone Mauresmo (; born 5 July 1979) is a French former List of WTA number 1 ranked singles tennis players, world No. 1 tennis player and tournament director. Mauresmo won two Grand Slam (tennis)#Tournaments, major singles titles at the ...
and Dinara Safina
Dinara Mubinovna Safina (; ; tt-Cyrl, Динара Мөбин кызы Сафина; born April 27, 1986) is a Russian former world No. 1 tennis player. Safina was runner-up in singles at the 2008 French Open, 2009 Australian Open, and the ...
.
The first full match to be played with the roof closed was a men's singles fourth round match between British player Andy Murray
Sir Andrew Barron Murray (born 15 May 1987) is a British professional tennis player from Scotland. He was ranked world No. 1 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for 41 weeks, and finished as the year-end No. 1 in 2016. Murray h ...
and Switzerland's Stanislas Wawrinka
Stanislas "Stan" Wawrinka (; born 28 March 1985) is a Swiss professional tennis player. He reached a career-high Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) singles ATP rankings, ranking of world No. 3 for the first time on 27 January 2014. His ca ...
. Play on Centre Court had never gone past 9:17 pm, but with the roof closed and the floodlights on, the match could be completed after dark – at 10:38 pm. Merton Council
Merton London Borough Council is the local authority for the London Borough of Merton in Greater London, England. It is one of the 32 councils that form Greater London.
History
There were previously a number of local authorities responsible ...
's environmental chief David Simpson said after Murray's late-night win that late-night tennis would not cause any problems. However, when the record late finish was surpassed in 2010 during a match between Novak Djokovic
Novak Djokovic ( sr-Cyrl, Новак Ђоковић, translit=Novak Đoković, ; born 22 May 1987) is a Serbian professional tennis player. He has been ranked world No. 1 for a record total 373 weeks, and has finished as the year-end No. 1 ...
and Olivier Rochus
Olivier Rochus (; born 18 January 1981) is a retired Belgian tennis player. He is the younger brother of Christophe Rochus, also a former top-40 tennis player.
Rochus won two singles titles in his career and in 2004 French Open – Men's double ...
which ran until 10:58 pm it was reported that Merton council had imposed a curfew of 11:00 pm BST on Centre Court. This was then exceeded on Saturday 30 June 2012, when Andy Murray beat Marcos Baghdatis in their 3rd round match, which was completed at 11:02 pm, in spite of the 11:00 pm ruling.
On Sunday 8 July 2012, Andy Murray and Roger Federer contested the first Wimbledon final to be played partially under a roof.
The roof was designed by SCX Special Projects Ltd and controls for mobilising the roof were designed by Fairfield Control Systems Ltd. and Moog who supplied the electric control system comprising electric actuators, servo motors, servo drives and closed-loop controllers. All companies undertake all the planned preventative maintenance.
The roof's ten trusses each weigh 100 tonnes, and the total weight, including non-moving parts, is 3,000 tonnes. The total area of the roof when fully deployed is 5,200 m2. The cost of the roof has not been disclosed by the club, but is estimated at .
Scoreboard
The Scoreboard on centre court's present shape and layout closely reflect that of the original scoreboard installed in the 1950s, which featured manually inserted panels for player names and incandescent-lightbulb display of scores. In 1982, dot matrix
A dot matrix is a 2-dimensional patterned array, used to represent characters, symbols and images. Most types of modern technology use dot matrices for display of information, including mobile phones, televisions, and printers. The system is al ...
scoreboards on the same layout were installed on Wimbledon courts. These were replaced in 2008 by full colour LED
A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor Electronics, device that Light#Light sources, emits light when Electric current, current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy i ...
screens intended to provide full Hawk-Eye
Hawk-Eye is a computer vision system used in numerous sports such as cricket, tennis, Gaelic football, badminton, hurling, rugby union, association football and volleyball, to visually track the trajectory of the ball and display a profile o ...
replays to the crowd in the stadium.
Inscription
There is an inscription above the entryway to Centre Court which reads "If you can meet with triumph and disaster / And treat those two impostors just the same" – lines from Rudyard Kipling's poem ''If—
"If—" is a poem by English writer and poet Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), written circa 1895 as a tribute to Leander Starr Jameson. It is a literary example of Victorian-era stoicism. The poem, first published in ''Rewards and Fairies'' (191 ...
''.[René Stauffe]
The Roger Federer Story: Quest for Perfection
New Chapter Press
See also
* No. 1 Court
*List of tennis stadiums by capacity
The following is a list of notable tennis stadiums by capacity, that is the maximum number of spectators they can regularly accommodate.
Notes:
* Stadiums ordered by their capacity (if equal, by the first stadium to reach the capacity)
* Some o ...
References
External links
Britain From Above
– Aerial photo of the Centre Court at Worple Road during the 1921 Wimbledon Championships
features time-lapse video of the construction work
Information about Wimbledon Centre Court and a Photo Gallery
New Centre Court Retractable Roof
Key facts and project specification
Facts on Wimbledon
{{All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club
Sports venues completed in 1922
Tennis venues in London
Wimbledon Championships
Buildings and structures in Wimbledon, London
Retractable-roof stadiums
Outdoor arenas
1934 International Lawn Tennis Challenge
1935 International Lawn Tennis Challenge
1936 International Lawn Tennis Challenge
1937 International Lawn Tennis Challenge