Wimbledon to ‘move with the times’

London, May 27: The All England Lawn Tennis Club has decided to change Wimbledon’s honour roll for the Grand Slam Championships next month, removing titles before the names of its women champions both past and present.
In line with the tournament’s presentation of its male winners, Wimbledon will drop ‘Mrs’ and ‘Miss’ on women’s honour roll from here on. The change to the honours boards around the club is part of a push to further modernise the tournament.
According to The Times, who first revealed the move by the board, this will also change the tradition of listing the women champions, who are married. The process of married women taking the initials and surnames of their husbands will also be updated.
Since its inception in 1877, the boards of the grasscourt major have had the tradition of prefixing “Miss” or “Mrs” to each winner’s name, while the men are simply listed by their first initial and surname, the Guardian report.
The men’s champions are recorded by just their first initial and their surname, like last year’s champion, Novak Djokovic, has always been presented as “N Djokovic”, while the 1981 champion, Chris Evert was mentioned as Mrs J M Llyod after her marriage.
The move will change how married women’s champions will be recorded in future — with them being no longer identified by both the initials and surnames of their husbands.
This will mean, Chris Evert, who was identified on the women’s singles honours boards for her 1981 triumph as Mrs. J.M. Lloyd (after marrying John Lloyd) will now be simply referred to as C.M. Evert for all three of her victories.
Both before her marriage to Lloyd and after their divorce in 1987, her name was engraved as Miss C.M. Evert.
The Wimbledon’s honour board has been discussed and criticised frequently in the past, seen by some as reflecting “outdated and out of touch” customs.
In 2018, the New York Times drew attention to the practice of umpires identifying male and female players differently. A year later, in 2019, Wimbledon decided to end the policy of umpires identifying women’s players with their titles while they only called out male players’ surnames. So, Serena Williams would be referred to as “Mrs Williams”, while Roger Federer was simply referred to as “Federer”.
The decision came after the Wimbledon did away with the ranking points by the ATP and WTA following its ban on Russian and Belarusian players in view of the ongoing Russian invasion of the Ukraine since February 24.
Wimbledon begins June 27. UNI