Fascinating Wimbledon exhibition reveals players drank champagne on court
Suzanne Lenglen was the Serena Williams of her day. It was the Roaring Twenties and the six-time Wimbledon women’s singles champion was practically unbeatable. How? In breaks between games, she would neck champagne or cognac, passed to her by either her father or her coach. She gave it up once but then went back to it, arguing that sobriety worsened her game.
Spare a thought also for poor old Blanche Bingley, also a six-time ladies’ singles champion, who had her game rained off in 1907. While waiting to go back on she ate two bath buns, seven slices of bread, seven biscuit cakes, three slices of other types of cake, and three plates of strawberries before falling asleep. Then the rain stopped and she was summoned back on court.
Needless to say, she lost that semi-final.
These two incredible stories form part of the Wimbledon All England Lawn Tennis Club’s new exhibition, A Slice of History: Food and Drink at Wimbledon, which is open now. The exhibition is part of the long-running museum and features stories from the culinary history of the Championships, from the strawberries and cream to the hedonistic boozing that players got up to while on the court a hundred years ago, with images and infographics to bring it all to life.
Wimbledon’s strawberries and cream history
“I’m pretty sure in that Roaring Twenties era that would have been pretty normal,” Clio O’Sullivan, a curator at Wimbledon, tells CityAM. “The idea of having a little sip of cognac in between is just mad. Now player care is such a big thing.”
In terms of sheer consumption, the Blanche Bingley story is hard to top, says Sullivan. As for her mood after being knocked out, “she was really, really cross.”
Wimbledon’s curatorial team wanted to display every cake Bingley had eaten in that one sitting but couldn’t find a display case big enough. “There was just too much,” says O’Sullivan. “It was an enormous amount of food.”
It is also hard to believe that as recently as 2007, Coca-Cola sponsored the Championships and fizzy drinks were available from branded on-court dispensers. “You kind of mistakenly think of the past as this prim and proper time,” adds O’Sullivan.
Items such as Maria Sharapova’s iconic Evian dress, Serena Williams’ strawberries and cream outfit, a Pimm’s bottle from 1968, recreations of picnics from the eras, branded umpires chairs and the 1930s ‘Nippy’ uniforms worn by service staff are also on display.
It would be remiss for A Slice of History not to celebrate the perennial Championships serve of strawberries and cream, so a whole area of the new exhibition is dedicated to that dessert, which epitomises Britishness and Wimbledon.
How they came to symbolise the championships, where they are sourced from, and how many are served every year, including what happens to the leftovers, is all included, even if the rationale behind the association becoming so famous is rather unexciting: “It was literally just that strawberries are a seasonal fruit and Wimbledon fell at the time when strawberries are at their best.”
Next year marks the 150th anniversary of Wimbledon and O’Sullivan says it will be a big year for the museum. She’s already working on a retrospective exhibition looking at the origins of the championships. “It was a really humble beginning, only 200 people came,” she says. “You paid a shilling to enter, 22 players competed and they paid a guinea to compete. I’m really hoping to allow the visitor to feel as though they’re stepping back into 1877.”
A Slice of History: Food and Drink at Wimbledon runs until autumn 2026. Go to the official website