Tennis World Championships Open at Wimbledon

Wonderful glimpse of the Wimbledon tennis championship at its former home on Worple Road, including some of the era’s top male and female players.

Worple Road staged the first Wimbledon open championships in 1878, but by 1921 the ground was proving too small and the tournament moved to its present site in 1922. This film shows that final tournament in the old ground. We see a number of top players, including Brian Norton, who would lose in the men’s final, and “Mrs [Phyllis] Satterthwaite”. Crowds are large but the style is strange, with women serving underarm and the pace considerably slower than today’s game.