To celebrate the start of Wimbledon this week, we’ve created a timeline of the history of the Championships, the oldest tennis tournament in the world.

Held at the All England Club in Wimbledon since 1877, the English Royal family have attended the event since 1907, with King George VI actually once playing at the venue as a competitor in the men’s doubles in 1926!

Our new timeline of the Wimbledon Championships takes a look right back to 1877 when Spencer Gore defeated William Marshall in the only event of the championship, the Gentlemen’s Singles competition.

Women’s championships were added to Wimbledon in 1884, when Maud Watson defeated her sister Lilian Watson. The same year also saw the first non-British and overseas players enter the championships.

Scanning through the timeline we see changing fashion and hairstyles of the time, advances in technology such as colour photography and television, records being made and broken. The drive and determination of players continues to increase…the tournament’s first winner wasn’t too sure that it would catch on!

We’re glad it did and we’re of course rooting for the UK’s Andy Murray again, who was triumphant last year along with Serena Williams.

We look forward to updating the timeline with this year’s winners!

Articles of interest:
Titanic Tennis Star Survivors

King George VI competes at Wimbledon