With the announcement that Queen Elizabeth II will attend Wimbledon for the first time in 33 years (she last presented the trophy to Virginia Wade after the Brit won the singles title in 1977), Inside Tennis looks back on some royal (and not-so-royal) moments:
•The late Alan King was once introduced to Queen Elizabeth II. When she asked, “How do you do, Mr. King?” he replied, “How do you do, Mrs. Queen?” Her Highness was not amused.
•In a hilarious post-’89 Wimbledon riff, Chris Evert played Queen Elizabeth on SNL.
•Queen Elizabeth sent a message of congratulations to Andy Murray for winning the Queen’s Club tournament in ’09. Via Twitter, the Scot said, “Got a nice letter from the Queen saying well done for winning Queen’s. Put it in its own pile away from the bills.”
•Recalling the moments leading up to American Whitney Reed’s third-round match at Wimbledon in 1960, author C.F. Stewart wrote: “Whitney straightened his shoulders and bowed in the most humble fashion. The problem was the Royal Box faced east and Whitney’s offering also was directed east, thus giving the Royal Box and unobstructed view of his posterior.”
•On the eve of John McEnroe‘s exo at Buckingham Palace, the BBC suggested, “Old terrorists always end up having tea with the Queen.”
•Canon once ran an ad featuring the unlikely pairing of Andre Agassi and Queen Elizabeth.
•There’s a club in Vancouver called the Queen Elizabeth Tennis Club.
•King Gustaf V of Sweden was an avid tennis player and promoter who was elected in to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1980. He was introduced to the sport in Britain in 1876 and soon thereafter founded Sweden’s first tennis club. During WWII, he pushed for better treatment for Davis Cup stars Jean Borotra of France and Gottfried von Cramm of Germany, who had been imprisoned by Hitler.
•Back in 1528, tennis’ first popularizer — King Henry VIII — found a moment between beheading his assorted wives to have his tailor come up with his very own designer britches and stockings for his weekend game at Hampton Court.
•Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia, was such a fan of the sport that, when a telegram arrived announcing the destruction of the Russian fleet at Tsushima, he stuffed it in his pocket and resumed his tennis match.
•Monaco’s ruler, Prince Albert, attended the ATP Masters Series final in Monte Carlo in April.
•Spain’s Queen Sofia shook hands with Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer during the trophies ceremony in Madrid earlier this month.
•Greg Rusedski, a Montreal native whose mother and girlfriend are Brits and who changed his citizenship to Merrye Olde England, was given a hero’s welcome by star-hungry fans at Wimbledon. But when he returned to Toronto to play the Canadian Open he was booed unmercifully by fans who threw marshmallows and tennis balls at him, carried signs saying “Queen’s Fool.”
•The Daily Mirror’s Brian Reade wrote, “Tennis is a shambolic, elitist embarrassment, based around clubs which are bastions of conservatism for paunchy snobs who want to keep it that way. They are incestuous social havens…[The Wimbledon] fortnight is simply a jolly for anoraks in Union Jack decked chairs…A cringefest of blitz-like stoicism whenever the covers are dragged out, hideously overpriced strawberries, and curtsies to royal parasites whose escorted motorcades stop London traffic en route from palaces they pay 70 pounds a week to live in…It’s about middle England grandmas…creaming themselves over clean little Timmy [Henman] and his perfectly nice wife Lucy [and] speculation about whether the Queen will pull a publicity stunt by turning up…But mostly it is about rampant snobbery…It’s all about proud tradition, the same proud tradition that has stopped [Britain from] producing a men’s champion since ’36.”
•At the Spain-Australia Davis Cup final Down Under, instead of hearing the Spanish national anthem, fans heard a 1930s pre-Civil War Republican anthem named after a 19th-century revolutionary. Eleanor Preston observed, “It was the equivalent of Centre Court at Wimbledon rising to hear ‘God Save the Queen’ only for the Sex Pistols‘ version to come blasting out.”
•When asked if he noticed Princess Diana cheering for him from Wimbledon’s Royal Box, Pete Sampras said, “Maybe she has a crush on me.”
•Princess Di was casual player since childhood who enjoyed hitting with Steffi Graf, and even used her (appropriately named) Prince racket to fend off the paparazzi. And, of course, she loved Wimbledon. “She was the light of the Royal Box,” remembered Virginia Wade. “There were a lot of people who sat up there because they needed to be…[but] she looked interested. She would always talk to you like she was your best friend…She was so respectful of other people, whoever you were.” John McEnroe recalled how Diana went out of her way to ask him how he was doing during his difficult divorce from Tatum O’Neal. Monica Seles reported how she, too, had been hounded by the paparazzi in France. Always a fan of “the Colonies,” Di said, “When the Americans come in July for Wimbledon, you can feel the energy go up. It all collapses when they leave.”
