26 May 2009
Eleanor Preston
A retractable roof to protect Centre Court from erratic British weather means this year's Wimbledon may bear a striking resemblance to the Australian Open.
All the best ideas are there to be borrowed. If Centre Court has a familiar look to Australians coming to this year’s Wimbledon, it may be because the most famous venue in tennis is looking rather like its antipodean counterpart, the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne. The RLA was completed in 1988 with what was then a revolutionary sliding roof. Fast-forward to 2009 and, after three years of building and many more years of planning, Wimbledon has finally caught up: the 87-year-old Centre Court now boasts the most technologically advanced retractable roof money can buy. History will be made if and when it is used during this year’s tournament. For once, Wimbledon’s organisers will be praying for rain so that they can show off their new toy.
The English summer is known for its unpredictable weather, but the sight of covers being dragged across Centre Court’s famous turf, and downpours stopping marquee matches, had become as familiar as it was unwelcome. The interruptions and delays were exceptionally tedious for those who had queued all day to watch the tennis, but they were nigh-on disastrous for the slew of international television broadcasters, who were forced to beam either pictures of rain falling or archival footage of past tournaments to keep viewers entertained. Wimbledon’s fortnight of tennis is beamed into about 750 million homes in 185 territories each year. The frequent rainy days left an awful lot of people disappointed.
Having decided there was no option but to build a roof on its main show court, the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club – the full name of the venue commonly known as Wimbledon – has not skimped on the job. As well as a roof made of nine panels covered in clear fabric and designed to concertina open and shut in just 10 minutes, the club has also invested in an air-management system that will protect the grass court from excessive humidity caused by being covered.
Estimates of the costs involved vary – the club declines to discuss such matters – but the £100 million ($207.5m) mentioned in British newspapers when the project was first announced in 2004 would not appear to be outlandish.
“We set out to make Wimbledon the world’s premier tennis event,” says Ian Ritchie, chief executive of the All England club. “The new roof and air-management system is another important part of the championships’ progression and will guarantee the play that today’s audiences expect.”
Ritchie and the club’s chairman, Tim Phillips, are not the sort of men to leave things to chance, which is why the process of building the roof has been a painstaking one. Work on Centre Court, which included increasing seating capacity from 13,800 to 15,000 and a wide-ranging refurbishment of hospitality areas, began in 2006. Visitors to the 2007 championships were alarmed to see the court looking strangely naked after its traditional green awnings were removed so that the roof’s retracting mechanism could be installed.
By the time the 2008 tournament rolled around, the place was looking a little more like its old self, though it already had the white frames reminiscent of the similar sliding-roof structure on top of Rod Laver Arena in place overhead.
The new roof was given the warmest of welcomes when an exhibition match to celebrate the history of Centre Court – and to test its new feature – was announced for May 17, featuring past Wimbledon champions Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, perennial British crowd favourite Tim Henman and former world number-one Kim Clijsters, with a format of mixed doubles and knockabout singles. Tickets sold out in five minutes, becoming all the more sought-after when Clijsters announced she had so enjoyed practising for her return to Wimbledon, she would come out of retirement.
All the players have a special affinity with Centre Court: Graf won seven singles titles there, while her husband, Agassi (the couple has two children), won the title in 1992. “There is no tennis venue more special to me than Centre Court at Wimbledon,” Graf says. “I couldn’t be more honoured to play there again.”
Its new retractable roof might make Wimbledon’s Centre Court look a little like its Melbourne cousin, but, as Graf, Agassi and many other champions will testify, there really is no place like it.
Source: Qantas The Australian Way June 2009