Listen to this article:

With the arrival of summer in Europe, an ardent tennis fan such as myself anticipates the commencement of the only grass court Grand Slam – The Championships, Wimbledon. Held for the first time in 1887, it is the oldest tennis tournament in the world. The nostalgia for “tradition” that The Championships evoke has made Wimbledon the most prestigious of the four Slams for spectators. Even the tennis pros agree; from Rod Laver to Iga Świątek, players have often accorded it a hallowed status, a sort of crowning glory, in their careers. But what is it about Wimbledon that places it on the pinnacle of sporting success? Earlier this year, the BBC had given an explanation for it: “To outsiders, the event can seem forbiddingly formal…But beneath the military precision, is a surprisingly human system that’s underpinned by patience, fairness and a set of unwritten rules that have remained largely preserved since the Victorian era”.

In this essay, I argue – against the claims of the BBC – that the reification of the tournament into The Championships is symptomatic of Britain’s attempts to obscure the colonial origins of many of Wimbledon’s rules, norms, and mores; instead, these archaic conventions are celebrated as an emblem of Britain’s (imperial) past. In an attempt to appear “progressive”, the tournament has eased or done away with some ludicrous expectations like players bowing and curtsying to royalty. However, many remain and are enforced with alacrity. Here, I deconstruct and examine some of them in an effort to decolonise the tennis world’s fascination for the anachronistic customs that have come to define the tournament since its inception in 1877.

Kate, Princess of Wales wave as she walks with Prince George, Princess Charlotte, Prince William towards Centre Court for the men’s singles final at Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Sunday, July 12, 2026. Photo: AP.

The ritualisation of the antiquated

In 2006, the late David Foster Wallace wrote these words about the tournament while extolling Roger Federer’s game on grass:

“Wimbledon is strange. Verily it is the game’s Mecca, the cathedral of tennis; but it would be easier to sustain the appropriate level of on-site veneration if the tournament weren’t so intent on reminding you over and over that it’s the cathedral of tennis. There’s a peculiar mix of stodgy self-satisfaction and relentless self-promotion and -branding.”

How does the event remind us of its canonical value? By constantly reinforcing rules for players and spectators that are a legacy of 18th and 19th century British morality. 

The most talked about of these mores is the all-white dress code for the players which has existed for almost 150 years, that the tournament has only doubled down on, instead of relaxing. Take a look at its rules for clothing and equipment – all players must be dressed entirely in white, except for female players who can wear coloured undershorts beneath their white skirts or shorts to allay concerns over menstrual blood. However, this concession was made only in 2023 after protests from women. The tournament is so pernickety that off-white and cream are excluded from what goes as white clothing. As if their rigidity for the matches was not enough, the rules must also be followed for practice. Although the dress code has always existed and players were required to dress “predominantly” or “almost entirely in white”, they were made more stringent in 2014 to the annoyance of tennis legends like Federer and Martina Navratilova (who thought that the rules had “gone too far”). Both icons had been chastised by the tournament, Federer for his orange shoe soles and Navratilova for the pale blue stripe on a skirt she was wearing for an invitational doubles match. In the same year, several female players reported being forced to play without bras because they were visibly coloured; Venus Williams too was censured in 2017 for wearing a pink bra and compelled to change in the middle of the match. Andre Agassi was so annoyed by The Championships’ sartorial dictatorship that he skipped participating in them from 1988 to 1990.

The fixation with white clothing can be traced back to conventions of propriety and the gendered and racialised politics of the British Empire, according to historian Beverly Lemire. She writes that the colour white became the medium through which segregation and the hierarchies of colonialism were........

© The Wire