The blue planet that is Melbourne Park has never teemed with so much life as it has this year. Total attendance at the Australian Open reached 1.1 million, including qualifying week, and the 99-acre grounds were full of fresh experiments such as the child-friendly Topcourt area near the Yarra River.
This is the most ambitious and far-sighted of the four slams, perhaps because it has the ingrained inferiority complex that comes with being the youngest of four siblings. Nevertheless, over 20 years as tournament director, Craig Tiley has transformed the Australian Open beyond recognition.
Now Tiley’s grand designs are heaping extra pressure on the All England Club, as they strive to add another 73 extra acres to their bijou 42-acre site. The planned expansion into neighbouring Wimbledon Park Golf Course has been inching along for seven years, but despite a positive planning verdict in September from London’s City Hall, it remains stuck in development hell.
To the AELTC’s dismay, the well-organised “Save Wimbledon Park” campaign is now challenging the verdict via a judicial review, while a separate debate is considering whether the land might be protected by a statutory trust. Legal experts suggest that we are still a couple of years from resolution, and even then, it would still take five or six years for the new grass courts to bed down. In the best-case scenario, the expanded site is unlikely to be ready before 2033.
Every additional delay is a dagger to the heart of the AELTC committee. As they fly around the world for their grand-slam board meetings, chair Debbie Jevans and chief executive Sally Bolton see the other majors expanding into three-week operations.
Sports fans are increasingly clocking on to the attractions of qualifying – a three-round mini-tournament that whittles 256 men and women down to 32 – as well as the appeal of open practice sets contested by high-profile names.
These preliminary weeks drew 116,000 people at this Australian Open and 219,000 at September’s US Open. I don’t have a figure for the French Open, but since the recent stylish redevelopment of Roland Garros, attendance in Paris is also on the up.
It’s profoundly frustrating that the Wimbledon equivalent cannot be staged on-site because of the need to keep the grass courts pristine until the first ball is hit on the opening Monday. For the moment, qualifying is held three miles away at what used to be the Bank of England Sports Ground (now renamed as the Wimbledon Qualifying and Community Sports Centre Roehampton). But there are many disadvantages here.
For one thing, the site has a maximum capacity of 5,000 spectators. For another, the land is only leased from the Bank of England, so its use cannot be guaranteed beyond 2035.
While one understands the local residents’ strength of feeling about the golf-course expansion, there is one part of their argument which simply doesn’t stack up.
The campaigners say that, as tennis’s oldest tournament and the only grass-court major, Wimbledon’s future is assured without the need for expansion. But that’s because they don’t work in tennis.
It’s easy to forget that sports rise and fall, and so do individual events. Think of the decline of athletics as a whole, or the way golf’s Open Championship now plays second fiddle to the Masters. Anyone who spends time at these tournaments can see how quickly the All England Club is being left behind. As one high-ranking administrator put it last week, “When does traditional become old-fashioned?”
The AELTC would love to seek out younger audiences with a Kids’ Day – as happens at all the other majors during qualifying week – and a buggy park like the one that Tiley has instituted in Melbourne. On a corporate level, it would like to provide better facilities for sponsors. But none of this is possible while the club is handcuffed by its own spatial limitations.
It’s not as if Wimbledon will ever take on the same vibe as the Australian Open – an event which, like Tommy Steele, sees itself as an all-round entertainer. As a parent, you could quite happily take your family to Melbourne Park and spend the day on the climbing walls and the ping-pong tables without even worrying about going on court.
The All England Club is much more focused on the sport itself, casting Wimbledon as a temple of tennis, and creating a sense of aspirational exclusivity. The tournament’s image is predicated on quality rather than quantity, which is another reason why it wouldn’t try to compete with Melbourne’s crowd numbers. Wimbledon’s capacity is set at 42,000 for the moment, and the best guess is that it might rise by another 10,000 when the new facilities are completed.
On second thoughts, we should say “if” the new facilities are completed. Despite the recent green light from the Greater London Authority, SWP campaigners remain confident that they can nix the whole project through their latest legal challenges.
Such an outcome would condemn Wimbledon to a slow decline towards heritage status. If development becomes impossible, the less constrained majors – especially in Melbourne and New York – will gradually eclipse their old-world counterparts, largely on the grounds of space.
As with so many sports, the British codified tennis, only to see it adopted with great enthusiasm by other nations. After Madison Keys’s thrilling victory on Saturday, the Americans have won 352 majors, the Australians 166, and Great Britain 98. At this rate, a similar pecking order will soon apply to the grand-slam events themselves.
