The world's oldest and most famous tennis competition, held every year at the end of June and the start of July in Wimbledon, a green, comfortable area in the south-west of London. Strictly the tournament is called 'The Championships', but nobody says that — everybody says Wimbledon, and the name of the place has become the name of the event. Two things make it different from the other big tennis tournaments. The court surface is grass, which is now rare in professional tennis and makes the ball fly fast and low, so players who serve hard have an advantage. And there is a strict clothing rule: players must wear almost entirely white, right down to the shoes and the lines on their socks. This is where the phrase 'tennis whites' comes from. For British people, Wimbledon is not only sport — it is a social event and a marker of summer, like a national ritual. People who never watch tennis for the rest of the year will watch Wimbledon. Strawberries and cream is the traditional food there, sold in small plastic bowls at a famously high price, and the long queue outside the gates (called 'the Queue', with a capital Q) is treated as part of the experience rather than a problem. Rain stopping play, and the crowd waiting politely, is also part of the picture that comes to a British mind. In grammar terms the word works both as a place name and as an event name, so you say 'she won Wimbledon' as well as 'she lives in Wimbledon'. You will also hear it used to mean the very top of a field: 'this contract is the Wimbledon of our industry'. There is also a well-known London football club, AFC Wimbledon, but in conversation an unexplained 'Wimbledon' means the tennis.