The last amateur Wimbledon
The 1967 Wimbledon Championships were played at the All England Club in south-west London in early July, and finished with the men’s final on Saturday, July 8. Like every Wimbledon since the 1920s, the tournament was open only to amateurs. The following year it became the first Wimbledon to admit professionals, so 1967 was the last of a long run of closed championships.
That context shapes how the results are read. The leading professionals of the time, among them Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall, were barred from entering, and the 1967 champions won against a field that lacked some of the sport’s best players.
The men’s singles
John Newcombe of Australia won the men’s title, beating Wilhelm Bungert of West Germany in the final. The score is usually given as 6-3, 6-1, 6-1, a one-sided match. Bungert was the first German to reach a Wimbledon men’s singles final, a notable achievement in itself, but he could not match Newcombe’s serve and attacking game on grass.
It was Newcombe’s first Wimbledon singles title. He went on to win the event twice more, in 1970 and 1971, and was also a leading doubles player. Australia dominated the amateur game in these years, supported by a strong national system of coaching and the Davis Cup, which they won often.
The women’s singles
The women’s champion was Billie Jean King of the United States, who beat Ann Haydon-Jones of Britain in the final, 6-3, 6-4. This was King’s second Wimbledon singles title, after 1966. The British crowd had a home favourite in Haydon-Jones, who had won the French title in 1961 and would win Wimbledon in 1969, but King’s quick, aggressive volleying game was well suited to the grass.
King also won the women’s doubles with Rosie Casals and the mixed doubles with Owen Davidson, completing a sweep of all three events she entered. That kind of “triple” is rare. It established her as one of the leading figures of the women’s game, and her later campaigning for equal prize money and better conditions for women began a few years after this.
Doubles
In the men’s doubles the title went to Bob Hewitt and Frew McMillan, a South African-based pair. They beat Roy Emerson and Ken Fletcher, two Australians, in the final. The result was a reminder of how deep the pool of talented doubles specialists was in the amateur game, and that the top singles players did not always control the other events.
The professional tournament
Part of what makes 1967 an interesting Wimbledon is a separate event held at the same club. In August, after the main championships, the All England Club hosted a professional tournament on the Centre Court, which was televised by the BBC. Rod Laver won it. The event was an experiment, a sign that the club and the British authorities were prepared to let the professionals back, and it helped show that public interest in the professional players was real.
The sport’s governing bodies were divided over what to do. The International Lawn Tennis Federation had long opposed open tennis, but in Britain the Lawn Tennis Association moved toward it, and in the closing weeks of 1967 decided to open its events to everyone from 1968. The French Championships at Roland Garros opened up in the spring of 1968 and Wimbledon followed that summer, which ended a long argument over “shamateurism”, in which amateurs were widely believed to receive payments for appearing.
A first for television
The 1967 championships are also noted in the history of broadcasting. The BBC began regular colour television on its second channel, BBC2, in July 1967, and Wimbledon was among the first programmes shown in colour. The wider change in how people watched, the arrival of “color television” in homes, is a theme that runs through the year, and sport was one of the reasons for buying a set. Few households in Britain could receive colour that summer, since sets were expensive and the service was limited, but the tournament’s green grass and white clothing made it a natural showpiece.
Reading the result
The champions of 1967 are secure in the record books, but they are better understood as winners of the last amateur championship than as winners over the whole of world tennis. The following year Rosewall, who had been shut out of the major events for years, was able to compete again, and the game moved into a new era. Seen alongside the other sports of that summer, including the Tour de France and the pennant races in baseball, Wimbledon in 1967 stands as the end of an older arrangement as much as the champions’ own achievement.