Wimbledon stands alone. Tennis’s most prestigious major plays by its own rules. It has a dress code all its own. It’s played on grass, the least common, most idiosyncratic surface. At a great cost to its balance sheets, it has virtually no signage, no naming rights and, until this year, no play on its middle Sunday.
Sometimes Wimbledon’s autonomy works to its benefit. The tournament canceled the 2020 edition because, alone among the majors, it had the good sense to purchase pandemic insurance. Sometimes Wimbledon’s autonomy works to its detriment: It was the last of the majors to pay men and women equal wages. Today, Wimbledon, acting alone as ever, has committed an outrageous unforced error.
Wednesday morning, The New York Times was the first outlet to report that Wimbledon plans to ban Russian and Belarusian players from the 2022 tournament, a form of both protest and punishment for the war in Ukraine.
Every other tennis tournament strenuously has avoided taking this step, one in direct contradiction to the stance of the ATP and WTA. As WTA CEO Steve Simon told Sports Illustrated last month: “The WTA feels strongly that individual athletes should not be penalized due to the decisions made by the leadership of their country.” Wimbledon acts alone.
Most directly and immediately, this ban will impact dozens of players. There are two Russians embedded in the ATP’s top 10: Andrey Rublev and Daniil Medvedev. Medvedev, in addition to having recently achieved the No. 1 ranking, is the reigning U.S. Open champion. Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, currently the WTA’s No. 4 ranked player, reached the semifinals last year. Victoria Azarenka, a 32-year-old from Belarus—though a U.S. resident since she was a teenager—is a two-time major champion. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova is a major finalist. Using today’s rankings, more than 20 singles-eligible players have been banned—far more in doubles and juniors.
But beyond resetting the draw, this move resets precedent. Wimbledon has essentially said that individual athletes—who may no longer even be residing, much less voting, in their country of nationality—can be punished for acts of that country’s leader. And this is not banning a Russian soccer or biathlon team from competition, nor is it making athletes compete under a neutral flag. This is the banning of independent contractors, none of whom compete with funding from their countries of origin.
And what then, of players from a country that, say, executes a genocide against a Muslim minority? Or carries out other human rights abuses that Wimbledon deems offensive? Or players of one sovereign country that invades another sovereign country on bogus grounds of seeking weapons of mass destruction?
It’s unclear whether this policy will hold up legally. Wimbledon is run by the All England Lawn Tennis Club. As in the U.S., private clubs in the U.K. have great discretion to set their own policies. Still, Russian and Belarusian athletes might challenge this citing statutes about granting athletes equal rights of participation. They might lean on language on the charters of their tours. (Sidebar: It is here that tennis’s absence of a conventional players union rears its head once again. There’s a reason why, say, the NHL has avoided expelling Russian players.)
More critically, it’s unclear whether this problematic policy will have the desired effect. If the goal is to stand in support of Ukraine in general, and Ukrainian players specifically, surely there are ways to do so that don’t exclude other competitors. If the goal is to depress the levers of soft power to take a stand and humiliate Russia, does this achieve that end? Or does it foment victimhood and give the hard-liners a chance to say, “Look, I told you the West stands against us.” And does it have any bearing whatsoever on a delusional narcissist’s quest for an empire? As one player told me, “Do you think Putin gives a s--- about tennis?”
On the second weekend in July, Wimbledon will crown its winners. But the story of this event is already being told. This is the year Wimbledon took a stand against an indefensible war. But it did so in an indefensible way. And we are left to wonder: Which country’s athletes are next?
The most foundational requirement for tennis—on grass or otherwise—is, literally, an even playing surface. Wimbledon has just undone that. And has, instead, created a slippery slope.
