I'm Wimbledon and you're not

Every time I see a century-old football team playing important matches in a colorful shirt without being required to do so to avoid confusion—every time this happens, and it happens a lot—I thank the All England Lawn and Tennis & Croquet Club for being elitist. Without this trait, Wimbledon would be anything but what it is: a bastion of classicism that forces players—and their sponsors—to wear white, something that not even Real Madrid does anymore.

Age grants certain privileges: believing one understands the British and admiring some manifestations of their uniqueness, among which Wimbledon is one of them. Where is the beef? What's the crux of the matter? A long journey because, for decades, Wimbledon conveyed a moral superiority in tennis that made it a dour and unsympathetic tournament. From the time Manolo Santana won Wimbledon back in 1966 and the Duchess of Kent gave him the finger at the trophy presentation—let's be precise: she pulled her hand away to prevent the player from kissing it—until four days ago, newspaper reports included some negative coverage of tournament rules and oddities. Details and anecdotes that seemed to reflect a reactionary spirit. Steffi Graff, for example, was not allowed to be accompanied by a friend in the car that was supposed to take her to the hotel. The prevailing hierarchy in the locker room reinforced their "classist" and unfriendly reputation because other tournaments opened the doors and "democratized" etiquette, while varying the backhand, the racket material, and the clothing, an extreme that today reaches combinations and looks that are sometimes shabby.

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The loyalty to grass, the least practical surface of all, and the dress code—white, categorically—have helped to break down many of the old prejudices about Wimbledon. Today, far from being anachronistic symbols, these exceptionalities reinforce the tournament's personality. Wimbledon only resembles Wimbledon and is always there every July, like the Tour de France. While football stretches the scales to unsuspected limits and commercializes everything, the two rituals of July sport are already here. They reassure and humanize. They are not revolutionary, nor do they pretend to be. Why? When you see Alcaraz winning yesterday on Wimbledon's central square and you sense the great mountain peaks of France—and the occasional nap between mountain passes—you know that Donald Trump's world is changing, but less than you fear. And that everything that isn't tradition is plagiarism, as D'Ors said.