No Miss, No Mrs - Wimbledon to remove both titles from honours boards

The upcoming Wimbledon has added one more big change to its list with the organisers deciding to do away with the titles of 'Miss' and 'Mrs' before the names of female winners on its honour roll to match the men's boards, in a bid to modernize the tournament, according to a report by The Times.

The oldest Grand Slam tournament in the tennis calendar, had traditionally used the titles only for the women, whereas there was no such titular prefix in front of the names of the male champions. In fact, since the tournament began in 1877, women's and men's names on the honour roll have been presented differently.

Therefore, Ash Barty who won the Ladies' Singles title last year at the All England Club had her name put up on the honours board as 'Miss A. Barty' while the Gentlemen's Singles Champion, Novak Djokovic, went up on the board as just 'N.Djokovic' for the sixth time in his career.

Wimbledon's honour board has been the topic of discussion for a long time with several criticising it. In 2019, the organisers decided to end the policy of umpires identifying women's players with their titles while they only called out male players' surnames.

Case in point, 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams would be referred to as "Mrs Williams", while 20-time Grand Slam champion Roger Federer was simply referred to as "Federer", as a mark of tradition, which made many consider Wimbledon as 'outdated' for differentiating between the genders.

This scratching off of titles before the names of women champions will also do away with married women being identified by both the initials and surnames of their husbands, in a welcome change.

The grass-court Grand Slam is already in the headlines because of the ATP and WTA deciding to strip away ranking points from the tournament after the Big W decided to ban Russian and Belarusian players due to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. Wimbledon is set to begin on June 27th.