Serena Williams is arguably the greatest female tennis player of all time – a seven-time Wimbledon champion and winner of an astonishing 23 Grand Slam titles in all. Even so, should she have been given a wild card to enter this year’s Wimbledon championship? No, not really: a player who has been out of competition for years should not receive a direct entry into a Grand Slam without even playing a proper warm-up tournament. It smacks of a decision based on nostalgia and a desire for cheap headlines on the part of the All England Club.
Professional tennis should not be about rewarding superstars trying to relive past glories
Wimbledon relies more than ever on marquee names to attract a global TV audience, and they don’t come much bigger than Williams. It is, however, a slap in the face for many younger, and far less famous, tennis players who slog their way through the tennis circuit in the hope of a once-in-a-lifetime wild card for Wimbledon.
Why bother when the tennis authorities would much rather give a helping hand to an ageing icon? In doing so, Wimbledon has opted for a nostalgia fest as far removed from the elite sporting standards that Williams stood for in her glory years.
Her many fans (and plenty of neutrals) will be happy enough that she has been granted a chance to shine once more on tennis’s foremost stage. They would argue that critics of her wildcard entry are missing the bigger picture: wild cards exist for extraordinary circumstances, and Williams deserves to be treated as a special case. I’m not so sure. Professional tennis should not be about rewarding superstars trying to relive past glories.
