The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club at Wimbledon will not follow the other tennis Grand Slams by scrapping gender-neutral titles and is happy to stay with ball boys and girls descriptors, thank you very much for asking.
The Guardian reports unlike the Australian Open, French Open and the U.S. Open – Wimbledon will continue to use ball “boys” and “girls” now and for the foreseeable future.
The U.S. Open, which uses people of all ages for the role, calls them “ball crew” while it’s “ball kids” in Melbourne and Paris.
The suburban London club, which is proud of having what it feels are the best ball boys and girls in the business, said on Saturday that there are no plans to change their titles and the game remains the same when the championships begin on Monday.
Ball boys and girls line up following the Boys’ Singles Final match on day fourteen of the 2023 Wimbledon Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in Wimbledon. Picture date: Sunday July 16, 2023. (Steven Paston/PA Images via Getty Images)
Around 250 children with an average age of 15 are chosen each year from a pool of 1,000 applicants to assist at the All England Club, the Daily Mail notes.
Ball boys were first introduced in 1920s and ball girls in 1977. All are chosen from nominees provided by local schools.
File/ A group of ball girls line up behind one of the nets at Wimbledon, where they will be working for the duration of the 1979 Lawn Tennis Championships. (Jon Player/Evening Standard/Getty Images)
The Guardian report notes change is something the All England Club will embrace – but slowly.
After a New York Times article in 2018, Wimbledon stopped the practice of referring to players on court as Mr, Miss or Mrs the following year.
A ball boy hands back Ilie Nastase’s racket after the Romanian tennis player took a fall during his Men’s Singles semi-final match against Manuel Orantes, at Wimbledon, London, 6th July 1972. Nastase went on to win the match 6-3, 6-4, 6-4. (Dennis Oulds/Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty)
And it’s only two years since they finally removed the moniker “Mrs” before female champions’ names on the honour roll in the clubhouse. Another rule that shows no sign of changing is the one concerning players’ clothing.
While Wimbledon introduced a new rule in 2023 allowing women to wear coloured undershorts, the players still have to wear “almost entirely white”.