TENNIS + KIPLING = WIMBLEDON

Wimbledon is an annual Grand Slam tournament in the tennis competition. The best tennis players in the world come every year with the purpose of stepping on the grass of the Centre Court to play the final. 

During the week it takes place, all England watches this international sports event. Different traditions such as eating strawberries with cream, drinking tea or asking all the tennis players to wear white are followed during the event. 

But, what does Ruyard Kipling have to do with Wimbledon?

Panoramic view of  Centre Court

First of all, let's see who Ruyard Kipling was:

Ruyard Kipling was the first British writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1907. He wrote many short stories -mainly for children- that are considered classics in children's literature. Just to give you an example, he is the author of The Jungle Book which, apart from being a novel, was also adapted into an animated film, into cartoons and even the characters have been used for TV advertisements!! 

Ruyard Kipling

But Ruyard Kipling is also known by his wonderful poem If. If is one of the most popular poems in England. In fact, If was chosen the nation's favourite poem in a BBC survey in 1995. It is a poem about everything: loving and hating, victory and triumph, disaster and failure... It also deals with sacrifice, with recovering from failure, with not giving up,... so it is not surprising that two lines of the poem are written in the access to Wimbledon Centre Court in the All England Tennis Club.

Two tennis players waiting to enter Centre Court

Let's listen to the poem. Federer and Nadal will recite it for you!!!

Eventually, here you have If

If you can keep your head when all about you  
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,  
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;  
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;  
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;  
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;  
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,  
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,  
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,  
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,  
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!