Centre Court is also a generic British English term for the main court at any tennis complex.
Centre Court is the main court at the Wimbledon Championship, the third annual Grand Slam
event of the tennis calendar. It is situated adjacent to Aorangi Terrace and is home to
the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. Its only regular use is for the two weeks
a year that the Championships take place. Centre Court has a premier box that the Royal
Family uses, as well as other distinguished guests, and is also known by its postcode
SW19. A retractable roof was installed in 2009,
enabling play to continue during rain and into the night up until 11pm. Centre Court
was also host to the tennis competition at the 2012 Summer Olympics along with No. 1
Court and No. 2 Court.
Background
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 x 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 wasn't 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
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 roof for the centre court from
1922 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.
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 for the
stadium and building work began with the removal of the existing roof at the end of the 2006
championships. There was no roof for the 2007 event and fixed part of the new construction
was visible the following year. 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, Steffi Graf, Tim Henman, and
Kim Clijsters. Capacity has been 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.
The retractable roof, installed in 2009, takes up to 10 minutes to close, during which time
play shall be suspended. However the time to transfer from outside to inside play can
be up to 45 minutes while the air-conditioning system acclimatizes the nearly 15,000-seat
stadium for indoor-grass competition. The tournament rules for the Wimbledon fortnight
dictate the roof 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 and Dinara Safina. The first full match to be played with the
roof closed was a men's singles fourth round match between British player Andy Murray and
Switzerland's Stanislas Wawrinka. Play on centre court had never gone past 9.17 pm,
but with the roof closed and the floodlights on, the match was able to be completed after
dark – at 10.38 pm. Merton Council'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 and Olivier Rochus
which ran until 10.58 pm it was reported that Merton council had imposed a curfew of
11 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 11.02pm,
in spite of the 11.00pm ruling. The roof was designed by SCX Special Projects
Ltd and controls for mobilising the roof was 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. On Sunday 8 July 2012, Andy Murray and Roger
Federer contested the first Wimbledon final to be played partially under a roof.
Scoreboard
The Scoreboard on centre court is one of the more recognisable parts of Centre Court. The
previous dot matrix scoreboards on Wimbledon courts were installed in 1982 and were replaced
in 2008 by full colour LED screens intended to provide full Hawk-Eye 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 imposters just the same" – lines from Rudyard Kipling's poem If—.
See also
No. 1 Court List of tennis stadiums by capacity
References
External links Britain From Above – Aerial photo of the
Centre Court at Worple Road during the 1921 Wimbledon Championships
Centre Court Long-term plan 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