Talk:All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club

Pigeons?

"In the month before the 1985 championships, men with rifles took to Centre Court to eliminate the pigeons that had roosted there. Blood spilled onto the seats but it was wiped clean in plenty of time for the Championships."

Is this relevant or even true? The citation doesn't give any evidence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.12.64.21 (talk) 15:46, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Removed, the lines didn't fit into the article. As said the citation doesn't hold any information about this either. FruitywS (talk) 22:16, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

All England?

Why is it called 'All England' ? Was it exclusively for use by the English ?

It just means it was for all Englanders. Blast 23,02,07 2229 (UTC)

Interesting. Curious, actually, since the club has always been open only to a small subset of Englanders, as Buxton points out in the quote in the article. Epeefleche

It just means it is intended to have a national membership, rather than a local membership, in the same way as the Augusta National Golf Club. The same intent is expressed in different ways in British English and American English. Beorhtric 22:56, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Brilliant. Yes, in the US "All-State" and "All-American" and "All-NCAA" and "All-Conference" refer to the best in the indicated category, with all who are in that category being eligible for inclusion. To designate that a club or conference is national in scope, it would be typical for an American to use the adjective "National," "American," or "US," without appending an "All" before it. Epeefleche 01:04, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Court 2

For the 2009 tournament what is going to happen to the old Court 2. Will it still be in use and renamed court 3 or is it to be demolished? 90.198.231.56 (talk) 14:45, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Repeated "blanking" of para re: exclusion of Blacks and Jews from the Club; NPOV--what it means

The following paragraph bearing on the exclusion of Blacks and Jews from the Club, which has been in the article for quite a while, has recently been deleted repeatedly by one editor.

The club's "exclusivity" included its not allowing any black tennis player to play there prior to 1951, and no Jewish tennis player being able to claim it as their home until 1952. According to Angela Buxton, the Jewish former British Wimbledon doubles champion, it also has led to her exclusion. Buxton said in 2004, reflecting on the fact that the All England Club, almost 50 years after Buxton's 1956 Wimbledon triumph with Althea Gibson and, had still not invited Buxton to join: "I think the anti-Semitism is still there. The mere fact that I'm not a member is a full sentence that speaks for itself." Buxton told New York Post reporter Marc Berman that she had been on the "waiting list" since she applied in the 1950s. The Chairman of the Club appeared on television, and when asked about it said that he would have to look into it, and couldn't comment without more information. "I wish it still wasn't such an elite sport," Buxton told Berman. "I wish we could bring it down to a common baseline. It's going that way. It's still not there." After Gibson and Buxton won the doubles at Wimbledon, one British national newspaper reported their success under the headline, "Minorities Win". "It was in very small type," said Buxton, "lest anyone should see it".

I request that rather than continuing to delete the paragraph and edit warring, the editor discuss the issue here.

The reason given by the editor has been that the paragraph is not "neutral". I venture that the editor may misunderstand what is called for here by Wikipedia guidelines, which I will discuss below.

The reason that the material is appropriate is, as I have indicated in edit summaries, that it is properly sourced. As to the Wikipedia concept of "neutrality", the paragraph in no way violates it. In fact, its inclusion is quite clearly called for by Wikipedia's NPOV policy.

As Wikipedia states at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, "neutral point of view" is a fundamental Wikimedia principle that means that Wikipedia articles must be written representing fairly, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources.

Directly on point to the issue here, the guidelines states:

"As the name suggests, the neutral point of view is a point of view, not the absence or elimination of viewpoints. The elimination of article content cannot be justified under this policy on the grounds that it is "POV". Article content should clearly describe, represent, and characterize disputes within topics, but without endorsement of any particular point of view. Articles should provide background on who believes what and why.... Assert facts, including facts about opinions... By "fact" we mean "a piece of information about which there is no serious dispute." ... When we discuss an opinion, we attribute the opinion to someone and discuss the fact that they have this opinion. For instance, rather than asserting that "The Beatles were the greatest band ever", locate a source such as Rolling Stone magazine and say: "Rolling Stone said that the Beatles were the greatest band ever", and include a reference to the issue in which that statement was made."

(emphasis added)

That is precisely what this paragraph does, and why its deletion because the statement made by Buxton is considered by the editor in question to be "not neutral" is not reason to delete it.

One last point -- the editor has also been deleting the ref tags, so that inline citations are no longer inline. I ask that the editor desist with that activity as well, as inline citation are clearly preferred under Wikipedia guidelines.--Epeefleche (talk) 23:45, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

This section has been removed several times by several readers over several years, and Epeefleche has waged a solo campaign to include it. This content takes up about a third of the article and it wildly misrepresents the significance of this matter to the average user looking for information about the club. It is not a "significant view", but merely a personal complaint by one little known individual (she only won the mixed doubles, which is not a tenth as notable as winning a singles title), that has been generally ignored. There has simply been no major controversy over this issue, and therefore Buxton's comment is no more notable than any of the hundreds of positive comments about the club from people far more famous than Buxton that I could easily produce. But I wouldn't add such comments to the article because wikipedia is not a debating society where everyone gets a turn on the soapbox, it is an encyclopedia, and its job is to summarise the most important facts - not to list as many facts as possible. There is a fairly common complaint about the All England Club - that it is "elitist' because only privileged people can join - but it never focuses on blacks and Jews. Do a google search, and you will see that there simply is no widespread controversy over this matter, therefore it should not be included. Including it reflects the biases of one editor, not the needs of the general user. No -one is disputing that Buxton said what she said, but she failed to create a major controversy. I would say that this is not because the media is indifferent to accusations of anti-semitism, but because her complaint was so silly that virtually all major media outlets decided to ignore it. This is in contrast with for example the attacks by an American feminist on the policies of Augusta National Golf Club, which did receive widespread and sustained coverage in the major media and are therefore of encyclopedic note, and are quite properly included in that club's article. This case is different, because the complaint did not create a major controversy. You quote the line about the need to "describe, represent, and characterize disputes within topic", but there hasn't been a dispute. Buxton's comments were generally ignored, and this was because they carried no weight, and didn't deserve to be taken seriously. She was peeved that she wasn't invited to join the club, but most other people in her position (one time mixed doubles winners) have never been invited either. The honorary members are former singles champions. Her suggestion that her exclusion was down to anti-semitism was purely a work of an overactive and disappointed imagination. Her unfounded and defamatory comments embarrassed herself, not the club, and most of the media ignored them out of politeness to an old lady who should have known better than to vent her spleen. (I note from looking at old versions of the article that it didn't always say that only singles champions are given honorary memberships, but it has done so for a long time now.)

Because this complaint is trivial, its inclusion in the article is an endorsement of Buxton's point of view - anyone who knows anything about the club will know that only someone predisposed to sympathise with her claims would give a moment's thought to including the material, and anyone who doesn't know about the club will come away with a false impression that her statement was a major incident in the club's history, which it wasn't. Including this paragraph is incompatible with the neutral point of view policy, which must not be read as an endorsement of the knowing inclusion of misleading content.

As for being properly sourced, I could write, and source, five pages about the history of the tennis rackets used at Wimbledon, and add them to the article, but I wouldn't do so because it wouldn't be sufficiently relevant to the subject of the article to merit inclusion. The proper place for that content - sourced or not - would be at tennis racket. The same applies to your paragraph. It doesn't belong here because while it has some connection to the subject of the article it is just one of thousands of minor related topics that could be included in a thousand page tome about the club but shouldn't be included here, because a good encyclopedia article must display discrimination in its selection of facts, and avoid excessive length and meanderings into side issues. This article should summarise the key things about the All England Club in a balanced and proportional manner, not just present whichever random facts individual editors want to tell them. Your concerns are with anti-semitism and black/white race issues, both are much more important subjects than the All England Club, but the place to write about them is at anti-semitism and at racism, not here. An encyclopedia article should be a balanced overview, and your paragraph destroys any sense of balance here. This issue has been going on for years now, please just be reasonable, and let it go. Piccadilly (talk) 00:51, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

I stand by my above discussion of the Wiki guidelines here. The controversy is one that has been reported on and discussed multiple times, both in articles and in at least one book. That being said, I recognize that as mentioned there is a severe paucity of information in this article, and am happy to help build it up as I have just begun to do, adding additional information with appropriate citations. I note that Piccadily indicates above that "There is a fairly common complaint about the All England Club - that it is "elitist' because only privileged people can join". Perhaps that is something that he wishes to reflect as well. In any event, I'm happy for him and others to build up this article with appropriately sourced information, as it is embarassing in its lack of depth for such a venerable institution. I would point out that this lone editor, who my colleage takes to task for my status as such, is responsible for all of the 16 current citations in the article, and neither my colleague nor his colleagues has added material properly cited to fill out the article. It is there, I would submit, that efforts can most helpfully be made at this point.--Epeefleche (talk) 07:19, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I almost deleted the paragraph as well, before looking at this talk page. It gives a lot of weight to an interview that was made in 2004 (7 years ago) by Buxton. It needs to be shortened. Park3r (talk) 15:54, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The latest edition of this page states that "Jews were not admitted until 1952". I feel this may be misleading, since Ilse Friedleben and Danny Prenn played at Wimbledon in the late 1920s and 1930s-both of Jewish extraction and both affected by the Nazi laws in the 1930s. Suzy Kormoczy(adopting the Wimbledon archive spelling of her name) also played before 1952 The earlier version stated that Jews could not claim it as their home, which is a little ambiguous but not perhaps as evidently inaccurate. With reference to honorary membership of the Club, as far as I know Dick Savitt, a Jewish player, "Savitt also became the first Jewish player to win either tournament. In the Jewish parts of North London, Savitt recalled, "Nobody knew tennis there, but after I won people started picking up rackets".[, was made an honorary member after his win(in1951)(I'm open to correction on this) and certainly it seems Helen Jacobs was even before she won the singles.. And, despite what Mrs Buxton Silk says,it seems Althea Gibson was after her singles wins in 1957/8 as is traditional, even if this was perhaps ambiguously received: "After the tournament, Gibson received a warm welcome at the Wimbledon Ball and, as was customary for all winners, was given an honorary membership into the All England Club. “She was, as far as anybody knows, the first black woman to be a member,” writes Sports Illustrated’s Michael Bamberger. “Nobody cared. Or if people did, they pretended not to.”". I'm not sure if it is relevant to this discussion,but Ms Gibson was invited to play at Wimbledon in 1951.. I am not arguing against the evident exclusivity of the club, and indeed would like the article to be strictly accurate to avoid the possibility of special pleading in its favour. Nor am I trying to rubbish Mrs Buxton-Silk's remarks, especially given the struggles against anti-semitism she had to suffer.I certainly don't think the paragraph should be cut-the social attitudes of the club are certainly important and should be included as part of its place in social history. One further point: Angela Buxton was a doubles, not a mixed, winner(with Althea Gibson) in 1956, the same year she reached the final of the singles. Given Helen Jacobs' honorary membership before she became singles champion, Mrs Buxton-Silk might have a point about honorary membership, but perhaps not on racial/religious grounds, unless the club made a distinction between English and American Jewry, or between those who were openly Jewish or not(as apparently Helen Jacobs wasn't) or between those whose mother and/or father were Jewish. Andy Roddick, more recently, was also elected without winning the singles. In passing, the Club could certainly be exclusive on what appear to be class grounds, to judge from their treatment of Fred Perry after his win. "Perry often told how, taking a long soak in the bath after beating the defending champion, Jack Crawford, in the final, he had overheard a member of the All England Club committee tell the Australian: "Congratulations. This was one day when the best man didn't win." Crawford was also presented with a bottle of champagne. All Perry received was the club tie draped over his chair, and a #25 voucher redeemable at Mappin & Webb. No congratulations were offered." However, perhaps this is to blame the club for the attitude of one of its members. Kudoni (talk) 22:34, 20 May 2016 (UTC)Kudoni

Segregation

Can someone add in a section on segregation. Article a bit messy, maybe put in new heading, and then show references to dates when black and Jewish tennis players were allowed. How did this compare to other tennis tournaments. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.110.241 (talk) 15:30, 9 June 2013 (UTC) In partial answer to this,Ilse Friedleben, Danny Prenn and Suzy Kormoczy played in the French Championships in the late 20s,30s and 40s(and after)respectively: references to the first two in my contributions above. For Kormoczy, see the following ref:Kudoni (talk) 22:57, 20 May 2016 (UTC)Kudoni <

References

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Croquet

Does the club make any provision for croquet in the present day? The article suggests not, but does not make this explicit. There is a statement that by the late 19th century tennis had become the "main" activity of the club but not clear if the exclusive activity. Wyddgrug (talk) 10:46, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Arms

There's something not right about the blazon. The metals silver and gold are described argent and or respectively. The blazon I found using the link shows the arms emblazoned argent but the trophy as gold not or. There's a story behind thus surely.. Comes.amanuensis (talk) 07:51, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Typing error

In the Arms section, 'gentlemen' is rendered as 'Gentelmen'. 51.7.137.34 (talk) 12:26, 16 July 2023 (UTC)