This year’s Wimbledon Tennis Fortnight started in dry weather conditions but of course nothing is guaranteed during the annual championships.

Our unsettled weather patterns these days may be due to global climate change but the phrase “Wimbledon weather” is known to date back more a century.

In 1912 a newspaper reported that excessively muddy conditions at what was then the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club in Worple Road made it necessary to install a cinder path in the grounds. At that time the phrase “Wimbledon weather” seems to have indicated rain.

This week’s start of the championships marked the 91st anniversary of the move from the original Worple Road site to 13 acres of Wimbledon Park (now 42 acres).

On 26 June 1922, King George V officially declared the new courts open, the tarpaulins were removed, and the rain promptly started, continuing for days.

It proved a rotten summer.

Later in August of that year, a newspaper report of another tennis tournament said: “In spite of ‘Wimbledon weather’ yesterday, a fair number of matches were played between the showers in a gale.”

In 1937 The Times tennis correspondent wrote of a “blaze of sunshine that can surely be called Wimbledon weather”. The tennis became linked with hot rather than wet weather. By 1953, the same newspaper spoke of “real Wimbledon weather” on the first day of the fortnight.

But the reality, as we all know, is that Wimbledon often coincides either with hot or wet weather. A few years ago the Wimbledon Society investigated conditions each year since that first tournament at the new site 91 years ago. It found that there had been 13 wet years, 18 showery ones, 27 dry and 17 hot. The Society’s Newsletter summed it up: “Game, set and match to dry and hot over showery or wet.”

The Wimbledon Society is working with the Wimbledon Guardian to ensure that you, the readers, can share the fascinating discoveries that continue to emerge about our local heritage.

For more information, visit wimbledonsociety.org.uk and www.wimbledonmuseum.org.uk.

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