All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club - Facilities

Facilities

The club currently has 19 tournament grass courts, as well as five red shale courts, three Continental clay courts, one American clay court, and five indoor courts, which are hidden under temporary stands and marquees during the tournament. There are also 22 Aorangi Park grass courts, which serve as competitors' practice courts before and during the championships. An experimental SoftB hard court has been laid down. The grass courts can be used from May until September. The grass has been cut to 8 mm since 1995, and 100% perennial rye grass has been used for its strength since 2001 (prior to that, it was 70% perennial rye and 30% creeping red fescue). The courts are renovated in September, using one ton of grass seed annually.

The largest court is Centre Court, which usually hosts the finals of the main singles and doubles events at the championships. The quotation above the players' entrance to Centre Court is an extract from the poem "If", by Rudyard Kipling, which reads: "If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same." This court also served as the main venue for the tennis events at the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Initially, the courts were arranged in such a way that the principal court was situated in the middle with the others arranged around it; hence the title "Centre Court". The present Centre Court, built in 1922 upon the move of the club, wasn't actually in the centre at the time it was built, but as new courts were added in later years it became a more accurate description. It currently seats 15,000 – expanded from 14,000 following redevelopment in 2007–08 (spatially, the expansion is greater than those numbers imply, as seats have been widened), and (as of 2009) is the fourth-largest tennis stadium in the world. The club installed a retractable roof on Centre Court which was completed in May 2009. It is a 'folding concertina' made of 5,200 square metres of a translucent waterproof fabric that allows natural light to reach the grass, and opens/closes in under 10 minutes. Redevelopment work commenced in 2006 and Centre Court had no roof at all in place for the duration of the 2007 Championships.

The other 'show court' is No. 1 Court, built in 1997, which holds around 11,500 people and occasionally plays host to Davis Cup matches (Centre Court usually being reserved for the Wimbledon Championship). A new No. 2 Court with 4,000 seats was first used at the 2009 Championships. The old No. 2 Court was renamed No. 3 Court in 2009, and was rebuilt after the 2009 championships.

The club also houses the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum, and it still has a croquet lawn, but it is too small for top-level competitions.