To Wimbledon, With Love

A love letter to Wimbledon. And surely, love knows no reason. But in this case, we have, oodles of reason.

Dear Wimbledon,

The first time when I saw you I was a 9-year-old little girl. Those days, most of my summers were spent surrounded by Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl books. What I saw on television was not very different from that make-believe world my favorite authors transported me to.

The beautifully manicured grass, the pristine white, the strawberry and cream, the etiquettes, the royalty and the pleasant British summer. For a little 9-year-old girl, you were in a big royal British garden party to which I was invited.

It has been over 15 years since I have known you and with each year, the intensity of what I feel for you has only grown stronger. At first, you were just a casual summer fling that gave me momentarily happiness as it pulled me away from my reality and took me straight into a fairytale. However, as I started to understand you and unravel all those layers, I started falling in love with you. That love has since turned into devotion. You are now a pilgrimage that I take every year with fellow devotees where we all gather together to collectively celebrate what you stand for.

Most people don’t really understand you. They think you are just a tennis tournament, but to someone who has known you so intimately, you are much more than just that. You are an ideal. A way of life. Where tradition, decorum and etiquettes are still considered qualities worthy of holding on to. Where subtlety is the king. It is a world in complete contradiction to the one we are living in today. It is the world where the good guy doesn’t necessarily come last.

I have seen people look at you and sneer that you, the Wimbledon, highlights nothing but the last vestiges of upper-class snobbery. How wrong are they. They don’t realize that you actually represent and personify what sports stand for—a quest for perfection done with complete purity and grace.

Those beautifully manicured grass courts are tended till they get the perfect 8mm blade length. 8,000 temporary workers ensure that everything works in sync. The local ballboys and girls are trained for hours till they completely realize the importance of the task bestowed upon them. It is this atmosphere of perfection in the midst of which men and women find themselves playing tennis. Sometimes the best tennis of their lives. Maybe it is because you push them to do so. Pete Sampras once famously said “They act like they’ve got the biggest tournament in the world, and they’re right, they do.”

Most people don’t dream of becoming tennis players. Most dream of playing at the Wimbledon. Tennis just happens to be the only means of doing that.

Maybe that is the reason why tennis has learnt so much from you. A tennis player never sledges. A tennis player never mocks an opponent’s mistake. And if the ball kisses the net and just about crosses over to the other side, a true tennis player apologizes to the opponent for it.

You have taught us grace. One of your lesser known attributes is that you are a masterpiece in branding and marketing. In today’s world, where everyone thumps their chests in a public a venue that they can without getting a heart attack, you exemplify a lesson they don’t emphasize often enough at business schools: the idea that less is more.

The idea that the core brand comes first. The idea that business relationships need to be nurtured and grown. The idea that the consumer is king and needs to be treated with respect. The idea that brands don’t need to be constantly visible to be impactful.

Unlike other tennis tournaments, you don’t allow advertising around the edge of the courts, on player apparel or anywhere else where there are eight inches of free space. Thank you for not subjecting us to a blizzard of logos. It is okay for a Ralph Lauren to provide the uniforms of the ball kids and the officials, Slazenger the balls, Rolex the time and IBM the scores. It is okay as long as you remain the centrepiece. You are a unique masterpiece and it is only fair that all the attention remains on you.

Which is why I love the idea of players wearing white and coming to you. White is so much more than a colour, it is such a powerful idea. White is purity. White is the colour of belief and hope.

“White does not include off-white or cream.”

There can only be “a single trim of colour no wider than one centimetre.”

“Any [coloured] undergarments that either are or can be visible during play (including due to perspiration) are not allowed.”

Your dress code is not stifling. I think it is liberating. In this world of constant rapid motion, white has a calming effect. It slows us down. It makes everyone an equal. It makes everyone understand the significance the of the task they are about to undertake. A chance to be a part of your world, a chance to be a part of history.

And while most people will tell you to “loosen up” and change with time. I don’t want you to. I think it is important for us as humans to keep certain constants around which we pivot our change. For me you are that constant. You promise to remain the same and I promise to be devoted to you all my life.