Why Wimbledon's fiercest competition is not tennis: ‘I wish they would credit artists more'

New York Times

10-07-2025

WIMBLEDON, ENGLAND — There is no room for error. Winning margins are fine and the path to victory gets more intense with each passing year. On a beautifully manicured surface, competitors express themselves through their strokes all over Wimbledon.
'Every year people really push because they know it's happening. There's a community edge to it but then there are people who are really competitive,' Kimberley Salmassian said during an interview in south-west London. 'The ones who are competitive are very conscious of who they feel they've got to beat from last year.'
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While 256 of the best tennis players in the world face off in pursuit of the men's and women's singles titles, 60 businesses in SW19 (the famous postcode for the Championships) take part in the annual Wimbledon Village Tennis Windows Competition, set up by Salmassian in 2013.
Shops, restaurants, pubs, cafes and other local businesses produce ornate window displays not just to delight the thousands of tennis tourists who wander up and down Church Road, but to win. There are mannequins with giant tennis balls for heads in Mary's Living & Giving charity shop; Italian food shop Vallebona has pillars made out of tennis balls topped by cheese wheels.
Prizes were presented at a special awards night and included a three-night stay in Athens for the winner, Hemingways, a cocktail bar, as well as a teeth whitening voucher worth £425 ($578). In second place was the Rose & Crown pub with its gigantic tennis balls, which won Centre Court tickets and a £100 ($136) gift voucher. In total there were 38 individual prizes donated by local businesses which included more teeth whitening vouchers, hampers from Fortnum & Mason department store, 12 pizzas from Pizza Express, bottles of champagne and more.
If they aren't doing it themselves, the participants, who are mostly members of the Wimbledon Village Business Association, employ artists to paint or draw something colorful and tennis-themed on their window fronts. But once the competition is over, to the shops go the spoils.
'If they stop and say something, that's when you know it's a good one,' artist Sam Temple-Milnes said while illustrating the window of Served, a coffee shop in the center of Wimbledon.
'It's good for the community, the businesses and good for the artists that get hired – but in terms of the competition, I wish that it would credit the artists more,' Temple-Milnes, 30, added.
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Alessandra Tortone, an Italian who lives in east London, agrees. Tortone's design for Hemingways won the competition both last year and this year. After her victory in 2024, she was in high demand, hand-painting 'seven or eight' windows. But other than putting the artists' signatures on the windows themselves, it is up to the businesses to decide whether or not they share some of the glory with the people who made it possible.
'We always share their stuff. But it's not here to promote individuals who have been brought in to do the windows. It's a competition for the village and the businesses,' Salmassian, a former shop owner who now works in the charity sector, said. Salmassian said that the All England Club part-funds the competition, which it confirmed during the first week of this year's Championships.
'Some of them do big up their artists. One business where they had a volunteer do their window, it might have been the year they won and they gave them (Centre Court) tickets,' Salmassian said.
'We don't always enter but we always like to do something lovely for Wimbledon to brighten up the road and show off our talents and what we're capable of,' said Iyata Golding of Gardenia of London, a florist on Wimbledon High Street.
Golding hoped that a lack of fresh flowers on display this year would have given Gardenia a point of difference, when the 12 judges cast their votes alongside an online public poll, which closed on July 7 ready for the awards night on July 8. But they finished in joint 16th and 17th position alongside Andy's Salon in the two voting categories.
'The judges are a mix of ages, genders, different backgrounds, some local, some non-local and I change it up,' Salmassian, who was born in the area, said.
'They do a maximum of three years in a row to give them a break and get a fresh perspective. I always try and have a mix of old and new judges. They have a two-tier scoring system, so they mark it out of 20 for every single window. They have to visit them all in person and have to give me their top 10 as a double check.'
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Eleanor Riley is deputy head of communications at Merton Council and is at the top of Wimbledon Hill Road overseeing the council's installation of a photo opportunity point for visitors which is a bench with an archway of flowers above. Riley says the council, who look after the hanging baskets and general tidiness of the area, have been inspired to bring something with their branding on directly to the village.
'A lot of places would bid to host something like Wimbledon and we get to do it every year so we are embracing it,' Riley says. 'The window displays just add so much character and a celebratory atmosphere to the village. It's already such a beautiful area but it's nice when something like this comes to a place and it feels like everyone takes part.'
As spectators have flooded through the area over the past fortnight en route to one of the biggest events in sport, they have passed those beautiful displays, forged in no less competitive conditions.
(Top photo of Hemingways' winning design for 2025: Richard Baker / In Pictures via Getty Images)