What separates this year’s ‘empty seats on centre court’ scandal from every other year’s ‘empty seats on centre court’ scandal? Wimbledon has always been a garden party with some tennis thrown in, attended by the least sports-driven crowd in existence – the matrons of Guildford and Godalming who manage to love Rafa and Andy for a fortnight, but not much longer, and whose need for a punnet of strawberries and cup of tea at around 4 p.m. is eternal. And for whom it’s funny if the ball hits the umpire’s chair.
Wimbledon is half a tennis tournament and half the last redoubt of a disappearing England. Certainly the BBC saw the centenary of the centre court and the departure of Sue Barker as an excuse to make its coverage more syrupy than ever. Each year Sue has looked more and more as though she has just been helicoptered in from a garden party in the Home Counties.
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