Last of the Four: Wimbledon, Equal Prize Money and the Weight of Tradition

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Wimbledon's reputation for guarding its traditions extended, for decades longer than its rivals, to how much it paid its own champions. The US Open became the first Grand Slam tournament to pay equal prize money to its men's and women's singles champions in 1973, the same year Billie Jean King's advocacy for equal pay reshaped professional tennis, and the French Open followed in 2006. Wimbledon held out the longest of the four, defending the gap for years partly on the grounds that men played best-of-five-set matches while women played best-of-three, a distinction critics noted was itself a format Wimbledon and the other majors had chosen to keep.

Pressure built publicly in the mid-2000s. Venus Williams, then a multiple Wimbledon champion, wrote an opinion piece in The Times in 2006 arguing directly against the All England Club's reasoning, and campaigners including the Women's Tennis Association pressed the case in the same period. The All England Club announced in February 2007 that it would pay equal prize money to its singles champions starting that year's Championships, finally closing the gap across all four majors. Venus Williams went on to win the 2007 title herself, becoming the first woman to collect a fully equal champion's purse at the tournament that had resisted the change longest.