“Our Ginny”: Virginia Wade,the 1977 Wimbledon Championships and the Gendering of National Identity

Abstract

Within sport media, it is customary for sportsmen rather than sportswomen to be accorded the privileges and responsibilities of competing not just for the nation but also on behalf of it. However, under certain circumstances, it is apparent that the typically gendered media conventions may shift to accommodate nationally important sportswomen. This study concerns the British tennis player Virginia Wade, and via a textual analysis, the print-media discourse surrounding her 1977 Wimbledon triumph is analyzed. It is argued that the wider sociohistorical and personal contexts of her victory helped facilitate a shift, whereby her national identity rather than her gender becoming the primary media frame. Not only was Wade’s win considered significant amidst the mid-1970s economic downturn in Britain, it also coincided with Wimbledon’s centenary and a visit by the Queen during jubilee year. Consequently, her victory was imbued with national symbolism through displays of “banal nationalism.” Coupled with Wimbledon’s “invented traditions,” Wade was represented as embodying the British “imagined community” through her play and approach. This study’s findings reassert the importance of examining the intersections of gender and national identity in sport media and urges for more research that foregrounds historical context as a key factor for female athlete national transcendence.

Keywords

tennis gender textual analysis British identity print media

The media plays a powerful role in shaping public opinion and influencing discourses around social structures such as gender, class, race, and national identity. Sport media is overwhelmingly male-dominated, and within its discourse, female athletes and their sports are typically subordinated and trivialized (Bernstein, 2002). Consequently, it has become customary for male rather than female athletes to be accorded roles as “representatives of national character and identity” (Vincent & Crossman, 2009, p. 260) and the concomitant privileges and responsibilities of competing not just for the nation but also on behalf of it (Bairner, 2015; Bruce, 2008). The complex connections between sport, media, gender, and national identity, however, are in need of further exploration, given the compelling acknowledgement that, under “special circumstances,” the standard media conventions that marginalize female athletes “may be ‘bent’ to accommodate nationally important female sports stars” (Wensing & Bruce, 2003, pp. 388, 389). Similarly, von der Lippe (2002) suggested that female athletes in sport media could elicit nationalistic support if the sport was presented as having a rich history and winning tradition, and as “female appropriate”; if the event generated an international media presence; and if the female athlete(s) was framed as strong, emotionally stable, and had a good chance of success. These criteria are static, however, and do not account for performances within unique, dynamic circumstances. Thus, there is a need for further research that foregrounds historical context as a key factor in this process.

Sociohistorical Context and Background

This article concerns the British tennis player Virginia Wade and examines the media coverage surrounding her Wimbledon singles triumph in 1977. It is suggested that narratives of Wade’s achievement supplanted the traditional gendering of sport reporting, which ultimately facilitated her transcendence as a national icon but only through a unique set of contextual and personal circumstances that were mobilized by the media. Not only, in 1977, did “The Championships” celebrate its centenary (gentlemen’s singles), but also Queen Elizabeth II visited the tournament—on Ladies Finals Day no less—for the first time since 1962.¹ The fact that it was also the Queen’s silver jubilee located her attendance at Wimbledon within a larger national celebration. Wade triumphed within an atmosphere celebrating these twin milestones, which marked the 1977 Championships as exceptional, not only for Wade, but also for tennis, the All England Lawn Tennis Club, and Great Britain.

The Wimbledon Championships is and always has been a uniquely “English” sporting institution. Through its marketing and mediated symbolism, it draws heavily upon national imagery to invoke nostalgia for an apparent “golden age”—before the inception of “Open Tennis” in 1968—when it was understood that lawn tennis was approached as a casual pastime and played for love rather than pecuniary gain and with an indefatigable amateur spirit (Lake, 2017b; Wagg, 2017). Although research has highlighted the extent that the “quintessential amateur” narrative has been exaggerated in historical commentaries of the “golden age” before the shift in 1968 to the highly commercialized and professionalized “open era” (see Jefferys, 2009b; Lake, 2015)—in part due to the rampant “shamateur” practice of athletes taking money “under-the-table”—the sense that British success played into the widespread celebration of this era is also apparent, as if the British alone were the sole arbiters and protectors of the true amateur spirit of how sport should best be played. Thus, the full celebration of Wimbledon as an institution of national significance is concomitant with British success within it, such that the perennial longing—if not overwhelming expectation—of British success has always been a defining aspect of its mediated cultural representation, and particularly in the postwar period when the yearning for British success was heightened in the context of a broader sense of national decline.

Notably, the “calamitous setback of Suez” in 1956 and the decolonization of Britain’s overseas territories throughout Africa and Asia in the 1960s preceded a turbulent period of “national introspection” (Bédarida, 1979, p. 274). Porter (2004, p. 32) termed this the “ideology of declinism”:

Though better fed, better clothed, better housed, better educated and better off than any previous generation, English people who lived through or were born in the post-war era became accustomed to the idea that they belonged to an old country that had seen better days.

This shifting national mood was fuelled by stagnating British industries, an acknowledged lack of nuclear power in the burgeoning Cold War, a gradually increasing trade deficit, and mounting evidence of economic weakness and stagnant growth in comparison to the booming American and German economies. Pound sterling was devalued in 1967, and the early 1970s witnessed mining strikes, an oil crisis, and the slow descent into a recession, which precipitated the introduction of a 3-day week and a large International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout in 1974. The following year, inflation had escalated to 25%. With unemployment rising steadily throughout the late 1970s, the British economy had scarcely seen worse days (Bédarida, 1979). The performances of British athletes carried considerable national significance at this time, depicted as somehow reflecting the declining fortunes of a nation longing to return to this mythical “golden age” of British prominence (King, 2006; Maguire & Poulton, 1999).

The best chances to rescue British tennis hopes in the postwar period fell to the leading women. Indeed, in summarizing the decent prospects of a British female winning Wimbledon in 1977, Tingay (1977, June 22, p. 30) invoked memories of Angela Mortimer and Ann Jones, who triumphed in 1961 and 1969, respectively, and remarked: “The picture for Britain was not entirely bleak, but then it rarely is in the women’s games.” That year, Wade was joined by the 21-year-old Sue Barker as a legitimate title contender, and while Barker reached the semifinal stage, ultimately it was Wade’s story of success that captured the media’s attention, invoking various cultural representations in the process of constructing her identity within the context of celebrating Britain and one of its key sporting institutions.

At the time of the 1977 Championships, Wade was 31 years old and nearing the end of her career. Her upbringing had taken her from Bournemouth, where she was born in 1945, to Durban, South Africa, where she grew up until she was 15, and then back to the United Kingdom, to Royal Tunbridge Wells in Kent. She worked to fit tennis training around studying for a degree in mathematics and physics from the University of Sussex, and only turned professional in 1966 after graduating. She won her first major championship at the 1968 U.S. Open, which immediately spotlighted her talents. Ranked inside the world's top 10 for 13 straight years (1967–1979)—as high as second in 1975—Wade was a perennial Wimbledon “champion-in-waiting,” and her triumphs at the prestigious Italian Open (1971) and Australian Open (1972), alongside four major doubles titles—1973 Australian and French Opens, and 1973 and 1975 U.S. Open, partnered with Margaret Court—further solidified this view. It was not until her 16th attempt, however, that Wade eventually won her “home” championship, and in this particular context, as is argued here, Wade’s national identity (as British) replaced her gender (as female) as the media’s primary framing device. This presents Wade’s achievement as unique, certainly at the time, and therefore worthy of further examination.

Literature Review

The Intersections of Sport, Media, Gender, and National Identity

The sustained hegemony of males in sport has long been reinforced through media representations that continue to privilege elite men’s sport as the pinnacle of achievement (Bernstein, 2002; Harris & Clayton, 2002; Vincent, 2004). Wensing and Bruce (2003) identified several techniques used by the media to sustain this power imbalance. Alongside “gender marking” and the “compulsory heterosexuality” that characterize much sport-media discourse,² they also identify the “emphasising of appropriate femininity,” referring to women through traditional feminine physical and emotional characteristics, such as weak, beautiful, graceful, and emotionally unstable; “infantilization,” describing female athletes as childlike, for example, as “girls” or referring only to their first name; and the “focus on non-sport-related aspects,” such as their appearance, personality, family relationships, or personal life, ahead of their sporting performances, thereby trivializing their accomplishments.

Despite the sizeable body of scholarship examining the intersections of sport, media, and gender, the construct of national identity has largely been overlooked as an intersecting factor (Biscomb & Matheson, 2017). Most articles related to sport and national identity have focused almost exclusively on sportsmen as “patriots at play” that embody “national characteristics” (Vincent & Crossman, 2009), supporting Bairner’s (2011, p. 32) suggestion that, historically, “there has been little sense that female athletes carry with them the hopes and ambitions of the nation.” The same privileging of male players within the nationalistic discourse is seen in tennis scholarship (Faure, 1996; Harris, 2014; Jefferys, 2009a; Lake, 2017a, 2018b; Vanc, 2014).

Several scholars have argued for a more critical discussion of how gender and national identities intersect in the media framing of female athletes (Bowes & Bairner, 2018; Vincent & Crossman, 2009; Wensing & Bruce, 2003). Research on the Australian Aborigine Cathy Freeman at the 2000 Sydney Olympics showed that, in Australian media coverage, Freeman transcended traditional gender framing and was recognized as carrying the “national burden” of representing a “new Australia” at a time when the nation was coming to terms with its colonial legacy (Wensing & Bruce, 2003). More recently, Vincent and Crossman (2009) discovered similarly that the representation of the Australian tennis player, Alicia Molik, during the 2005 Australian Open—which, like Wimbledon 28 years earlier, was celebrating its centenary—facilitated her gender identity being largely overridden by “nationalistic discourses” that positioned Molik’s Australian identity as its primary framing device (p. 258). This article builds off of these studies to highlight the importance of understanding historical context and suggests the need for more research into when these “special circumstances” may come about for sportswomen and how the media frames of gender and national identity intersect in these instances.

For this research, the insights of Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm, and Michel Billig into constructions of national identity, and their respective theoretical concepts of “imagined communities,” “invented traditions,” and “banal nationalism,” were used to illuminate how the British nation is represented in tennis, at Wimbledon, and through Wade’s achievement in 1977.

Anderson (1991, p. 6) proposed that the nation was an imagined community “because the members of even the smallest nations will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” Anderson considered mass-consumed sources of national news, like newspapers, as key media to construct ideas about the imagined national community. Hobsbawm (1983, p. 1) recognised national identity as tied to the celebration and practice of invented traditions, which he considered “a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.” Invented traditions are characterized by their supposed invariance, essentially with the aim “to establish continuity with a suitable historic past” (Hobsbawm, 1983, p. 1). That is, an institution’s own interpretation of “history”—within relevant contexts—is drawn upon and mobilized to legitimize particular viewpoints in support of their own aims—in the media’s case, to sell newspapers. Billig (1995) first popularized the term banal nationalism as, in short, the subtly expressed representations of a nation that, often alongside invented traditions, build an imagined sense of national identity, solidarity, and belonging. These representations include physical identifiers, like flags, but also more subtle identifiers like the playing of national songs and anthems, or the presence of recognisable representatives at national events.

Underpinning, implicitly, the positioning of Wade’s gender within discussions of the nation is the notion of “performativity”—originally from Butler (1990)—whereby gender is understood as a dynamic and embodied “performance” as witnessed through, for example, one’s appearance, behaviour, and play, in sport. This is crucial in the process of understanding the gendered embodiment and physical “performance” of what can loosely be described as “national characteristics” of Britishness.

For the purposes of assessing the media’s constructions of Wade’s national identity during the 1977 Wimbledon Championships, the main aim of this research is to undertake a textual analysis (McKee, 2001) of print media surrounding the event. This is supplemented with two further objectives: (i) to identify whether the standard techniques of gendered sports reporting—which typically marginalizes sportswomen and withholds full “national” representation status from them—also applied to Wade in this case and (ii) to assess overall how the media framing devices of gender and national identity intersected in narratives around the 1977 Championships.

Method

The collection of data is derived from two main sources. A large cross-section of British newspaper publications—notably The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, and The Daily Mail—was analyzed. As broadsheets, the Times (with an approximate circulation in 1977 of 300,000), Guardian (300,000), and Daily Telegraph (1.4 million) are aimed at an educated middle-class audience, with centre-right, centre-left, and conservative/centre-right sociopolitical leanings, respectively; the Daily Mail (approximately 1.8 million in 1977) has historically occupied a more solidly right-of-centre sociopolitical leaning but within a tabloid format. These four publications were chosen given that their targeted middle-class readership loosely corresponds to the predominant British tennis playing demographic and for the fact of their extensive Wimbledon coverage.³ The analysis of articles commenced from June 12, a week before the beginning of the 1977 Championships, until 2 days after the women’s final on July 2. Articles that discussed her play/performance or preparations were analyzed, which totalled 118 during this period. This was supplemented also with articles in various other British newspapers during the 1977 Championships, where these were available, alongside articles about Wade in the years/decades following the event in order to gauge long-term significance.

The second main source was articles in major tennis magazines about the 1977 Championships generally or Virginia Wade specifically. These had no date or geographical restrictions, but most were published in August/September 1977. Magazines from Britain (Tennis, Tennis Today) and the United States (Tennis, Tennis USA, Tennis World, World Tennis) were supplemented by those from other English-speaking nations, notably Australia (Tennis Australia) and South Africa (S.A. Tennis), and articles about Wade in Sports Illustrated—a more general American sport magazine—to add alternative perspectives.⁴ In total, 20 magazine articles were analyzed. These sources were supplemented by other texts where relevant, including player biographies/autobiographies—like Wade’s own (Courting Triumph, 1978)—for the purpose of adding contextual material.

Following similar analyses (e.g., Vincent & Crossman, 2009, 2012; Wensing & Bruce, 2003), a combination of (inductive) open and (deductive) axial coding was undertaken. Open coding was used to organize raw data into overarching themes, and then axial coding was utilized to link findings to previously compiled criteria, developed from the literature. The key question that guided the creation of these criteria was: How might it be assessed whether Wade was accorded the privileges and responsibilities of competing on behalf of the British nation? The confluence of ideas related to imagined communities, invented traditions, banal nationalism, and the “performance” of gender through supposed “national characteristics” guided the creation of these criteria, which are as follows:

Were her performances seen as representing a nation—that is, did she compete “for Britain”—and were symbols of banal nationalism indicated in the discourse?

Were her performances connected to invented traditions of a nation, and were they couched in nationalistic terms, as if through her performances she defined the emotions and character traits of the imagined British nation?

Did the dominant narrative (in the press) position her achievements as transcending race, gender, and class barriers, thereby uniting the imagined British nation?

The following results and discussion section is divided into subsections organised around these criteria.

Results and Discussion

National Representation at the 1977 Wimbledon Championships

Outside of international competitions like the Olympic Games, it is understood that national representation can be bestowed upon a sportsperson unofficially. While tennis players typically represent themselves as individuals, at major events, and where it is a player’s “home” tournament, the stakes are raised. This is particularly so for Wimbledon, which is not only positioned culturally as a “national institution” (Mills, 2005), it is also driven by a marketing strategy of “tennis in an English garden” (Gorringe, 2009, p. 129).

The press draw upon well-understood narratives—typically rooted in class, race, and nationalistic ideologies—to enhance the spectacle of “The Championships” as a key site for national celebration (Lake, 2017b, 2018a; Wagg, 2017). According to testimonies from several British players (see Bellamy, 1975, p. 58; Felstein, 2006, pp. 170-1; Mortimer, 1962, p. 138; Murray, 2013, pp. 141-2; Wade, 1978, pp. 75-6), this has the effect of the British press intensifying the pressure placed upon “home” players, for whom “it means just a little bit more” (Rafferty, 1984, p. 135).

For Wade at the 1977 Championships, the added contexts of the Championships’ centenary and the Queen’s visit were combined to create a simple narrative utilised in almost all reporting, both in Britain and abroad. Thus, Wade’s “storybook victory” (Bodo, 1977, p. 111) was likened to a “fairy-tale” (Atkin, 1977, p. 10; Brasher, 1977, p. 31; Fitzpatrick, 1977; Wilson, 1977, July 2), both for her and the entire British nation. Previous to her advance into the second week—essentially, the quarterfinal round—of Wimbledon in 1977, it was apparent that her age and previous failures worked against her presumed chances of success and therefore the extent to which she was seen to embody the nation’s hopes. Wade’s list of 15 previous Wimbledon ventures was notable for 2 semifinal and 4 quarterfinal appearances alongside several defeats to “little-known and unfancied opponents” (Atkin, 1977, p. 10). This included a first-round loss to the lowly ranked Swede Christina Sandberg in 1968—just 2 months before winning the U.S. Open—and a third-round loss in 1969 to the South African journeywoman Patricia Walkden. Thus, when The Sunday Times’s Ballantine (1977, June 26, p. 31) assessed her chances against her quarterfinal opponent Rosie Casals, he threw doubt on her ability to control her nerves:

Miss Wade has many times beaten Miss Casals and could and should do so again if she can treat Wimbledon like any other tournament, but can she? Miss Barker, I feel, has by far the better chance of reaching the final.

Others agreed. Barker was mentioned first in all of The Daily Mail’s pre-Wimbledon discussions of British prospects (e.g., Parsons, 1977, June 20; Pignon, 1977, June 15; Pignon, 1977, June 20), while The Guardian (Mon June 20, 1977, June 18, p. 9) stated that, while Wade was seeded third, “paradoxically, our best hope, young Sue Barker, is seeded fourth.” In agreement, Tingay felt the seeds for both should have been reversed, with Barker positioned above Wade, “for their last results point that way” (Tingay, 1977, June 14, p. 32); while Miss Barker “could be backed to reach the final…the chances of Miss Wade’s doing so are less than good” (Tingay, 1977, June 15, p. 34). The betting odds published before their first-round matches corresponded to this: Wade was 25-1, while Barker was 16-1.⁵ The elder was therefore, at best, an outside contender, and “most gave Sue Barker the best chance” (Beddington & Weatherley, 1977, p. 26).

After the last-standing British male, the 14th-seed Mark Cox, was beaten in the fourth round, the media’s attention shifted to Wade and Barker. Tingay excused himself of “chauvinistic feelings” in commenting on the prospect of Wade and Barker progressing toward an all-British final (1977, June 27, p. 26), and Wade’s straight-sets victory over Casals was equalled by Barker’s defeat of the Australian Kerry Reid, to sustain this mouthwatering prospect. “The British can still keep their jubilee flags flying” was the subsequent Times headline (June 28, 1977).

At this stage, Barker remained the favourite of the two Britons to reach the final, given her lower ranked semifinal opponent (see Tingay, 1977, June 28; Tingay, 1977, June 29), but after her defeat to the nevertheless imposing Dutchwoman Betty Stöve, the focus then shifted firmly onto Wade. Again, the nationalist narrative was invoked in The Sun; Myler and Edwards (1977, June 30) wrote: “Virginia Wade kept her jubilee promise to the Queen yesterday by storming through to the Wimbledon singles final.” Following her improbable semifinal victory against the defending champion and world’s number-one ranked Chris Evert—which made the front page of The Daily Telegraph—Wade marked her territory: “It’s my place, my crowd. I don’t see now why it shouldn’t be my tournament. I’ve let them down for years, haven’t I? But I’m going to have a real bash at showing England I can do it” (Keating, 1977, June 30, p. 1). Her newfound confidence and indefatigable spirit matched her powerful demonstration against Evert, which was taken as proof of something “special” happening—a point made by Bodo (1977, p. 110) who wrote of Britain’s—not Wade’s—“emotional victory.”

Wade’s words solidified her association with Wimbledon and with British identity, but her performance against Stöve in the final was less dominant—she dropped the first set—but after a momentum-shifting double fault from the Dutchwoman in the sixth game of the second set, Wade ran away with the match (4-6, 6-3, 6-1). In victory, the press reported that Katharine, the Duchess of Kent—a perennial figure at Wimbledon since the 1960s—was seen to have given Wade “a clenched fist victory salute” (“Jolly Good Fellow,” 1977, July 2, p. 1) and “waved excitedly to Wade from the Royal Box” (Collins, 2008, p. 187)—acts which indicated an assumed friendship—alongside enthusiastically joining in a spontaneous chorus of For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow.⁶ James (1977, July 2) of The Daily Mail wrote of how, “with exquisite tact,” after presenting the championship trophy, “the Queen backed gently out of the scene; she knew this time the singing and the clicking shutters were not for her.…[We witnessed] the momentary eclipse of a real queen by a canon’s daughter.” Wade was invited to tea at Buckingham Palace shortly afterwards, where Her Majesty was quoted as saying: “Wasn’t it marvellous for Virginia, especially in Jubilee year?” (Newcombe, 1977, July 2). The Guardian headline on July 2 ran: “Ginny’s Jubilee Wimbledon,” while The Sun’s two pithy headlines on July 2, “Queen Ginny!” and “A Royal Salute for Ginny,” utilized invented traditions—the presence of royalty at Wimbledon—to construct a sense of national solidarity behind Wade’s triumph.

These subtle signifiers fed into the symbols of “banal nationalism” on display, which were abundant. There were numerous reports of union jack flags being waved, “similar,” so said both Tingay (1977, July 2, p. 23) and The Guardian’s Irvine (1977, July 2, p. 20), to “the last night of the Proms.” Bellamy (1977, July 2, p. 20) of The Times recorded that “Union Jacks, large and small, were evident everywhere.” Her victory brought a “human thunderclap and the singing of every man, woman, and flag-waving child,” according to The Daily Mail’s Pignon (1977, July 2). The singing also included several warm-up tunes. Describing the prematch band—the Welsh Guards of the Queen’s Brigade—and the “little Union Jacks” being “waved vigorously everywhere,” Conley (1977, p. 46) of Tennis USA concluded: “The spirit of nationalism was tremendous.”

Noting the banal nationalism on display, several authors drew on Wimbledon’s invented traditions to mobilize historical mythology for the purpose of creating an imagined (British) community. Eldridge (1977, p. 20) of S.A. Tennis (South Africa) described the atmosphere and drama of “the greatest tennis show on earth,” before adding: “To cap it all, Wimbledon commemorated 100 glorious years, bringing to fever pitch the Royal Jubilee celebrations for millions of Britons.” He then framed Wade’s victory in the context of several invented traditions: queuing in the rain, the Queen, flags, and national anthems:

Loyal fans had queued for two days in the blustery, changeable London weather, for the right to stand with aching feet and craning necks to acclaim their 31-year-old heroine. The flags were out and as 2 p.m. approached the crowd rose to hushed attention as Queen Elizabeth and retinue entered the Royal Box. In the corner of the centre court, the band…had been whipping up the emotions with such sure-fire winners as Rule Britannia, Land of Hope and Glory. Immediately after the awesome hush, 14,000 people rose to join in a swelling chorus as the band played the national anthem. Sheer lump-in-the-throat stuff.

Similarly, Bodo (1977, p. 111) contextualised Wade’s victory as such:

Wimbledon is not just a tennis tournament but an English institution, an event bursting with the British sense of propriety. And what could have been more proper than a victory by Wade, upon whom her own championships had refused to smile for 16 years until the arrival of what had to be the most dramatic and appropriate moment of her career. Chauvinist currents swirl beneath the surface of even the most sedate of Centenary celebrations and Wimbledon needed only Wade to bring its own to the surface.

These descriptions among others framed the occasion as one of national (British) rather than simply individual importance; the displays of banal nationalism and “nationalistic fervour” (Irvine, 1977, July 2, p. 20)—complemented by the Queen’s presence in the context of the jubilee and centenary celebrations—matched the “partisan” (Bellamy, 1977, July 2, p. 20) and “outrageously biased” (Pignon, 1977, July 2) crowd in framing Wade as closely connected to the emotions of the British people.⁷

Embodying an Imagined British Identity

It is not uncommon for male athletes in international competitions to be described in accordance with certain “national characteristics” (Lake, 2017a; J. Williams, 2006); much like their gender, therefore, national identity is understood as “performed” through an athlete’s appearance, behaviour, or playing style. This was seen in the framing of Wade around the 1977 Championships, as journalists helped to construct her identity to fit the nationalist narrative. While acknowledging her cosmopolitan upbringing, the press described her appearance, behaviour, and play as firmly positioned within the “British establishment, which more or less prescribed a certain value system. In it, game playing is done for the simple sport of it” (Barkow, 1978, p. 19).⁸ The “casual amateur” approach to tennis that Wade adopted early in her career (Barkow, 1978, p. 18) presented her as a throwback to the apparent “golden age” of tennis, before 1968. In the process, Britain’s “amateur” tennis history was mobilized—particularly by journalists in the leading tennis magazines, who were afforded greater space to delve into aspects of her upbringing and approach to tennis—to frame Wade within a venerated British class system. Wade was presented as “performing” her British identity—conditioned within the expectations of a middle-class, female athlete—through her expressed attitudes toward education, money, training, and playing approach.

Wade’s plan upon graduating university was “to play big-time tennis for four or five years, win the important titles, most especially Wimbledon, then ‘retire’ to a career teaching mathematics” (Barkow, 1978, p. 19). The priority Wade accorded to her education, alongside efforts to create for herself a backup plan in an ordinary middle-class career, suggested a traditional amateur approach. Her cultural positioning in this light was reinforced by reports that she neither cared for money nor expressed any desires to commoditise herself: “I hated the constant talk of [money]…. If the money was there, that was fine. If not, I wasn’t going to go out of my way to procure it” (Wade, 1978, p. 102). Tennis correspondent for The Guardian, Gray (1975, p. 29), attested to her subtle anti-commercial stance: “She counts the money that she wins but still regards it as currency from Wonderland (‘amusing’ was the word she used).”

Despite speaking of the “unrestrained competitiveness” and “devotion” that she had for tennis from the very start of her development (Wade, 1978, p. 45), she also claimed to abhor the very notion of overtraining. She did not hire her first full-time coach until early 1977 and admitted: “I hardly do any training. I get bored. I don’t find it inspiring” (Kinnell, 1973, p. 32). Gray (1975, p. 30) added: “Always she wanted to be left alone to work out problems. She was bored when tennis tacticians came to her with diagrams pointing out her errors.” Wade’s alliance with amateur ideals was underlined still further by her expressed preference for aesthetics over function. In her play, she was described as “always moving with grace” (Kinnell, 1973, p. 32), and she admitted: “I would rather play beautiful tennis than win. In fact, if I’m really playing well, really hitting the ball, I can lose track of the purpose behind it all” (cited in Kinnell, 1973, p. 32). In these ways, Wade was performing her gender, class, and national identity simultaneously through her approach to training and play, all of which aligned with dominant understandings of traditional British amateur ideals.

The discourse presenting Wade as the “Last of the Big-Time Amateurs” (the title of Galway Kinnell’s article about her in Sports Illustrated) made her a palatable and largely unthreatening figure in women’s tennis at the time, in stark contrast to figures like Billie Jean King (for her feminist efforts), Martina Navratilova (for her overt muscularity), and Chris Evert (for her sexualization and self-commoditization). The construction of Wade’s “amateur” identity simultaneously reaffirmed her British and feminine identities. However, prior to the 1977 Championships, Wade underwent a transformation—adopting a more professional approach, aligned with her apparent “Americanization” (Barkow, 1978, p. 18; Bellamy, 1975, p. 63; Brasher, 1977, p. 31)—to which the press responded by repositioning Wade as a symbol of Britain’s future, rather than past.

Wade’s Apparent Transformation

The first mention of Wade’s “transformation” was in 1975, when Gray (1975, p. 29) discussed her improvements “technically and temperamentally”: “She is more relaxed, more confident, and more professional. She has stopped being the glorious British amateur.” Wade talked of having “been through two tennis lives, one a totally spontaneous approach…the other a more intellectual, professional one” (Barkow, 1978, p. 18). This change was seen across many elements of her “performance” including her training approach and play, ostensible on-court mental state, and even personal appearance. Her transformation—and subsequent success—in the broader context of the 1977 Championships helped counter traditional gender framing techniques. She went from being disempowered and marginalized as an emotionally weak and vulnerable female athlete—and perennial disappointment—to a composed, courageous, and powerful champion.

Discussions of her precarious mental state and unpredictable play were made in various magazine articles published before the 1977 Championships. Kinnell (1973, p. 31) described Wade’s play as an “excruciating emotional drama”; every match is a “nerve-wracking inner struggle” such that “she chokes and botches” decisive points. For Bellamy (1975, pp. 58–63), Wade’s “fiery temperament,” “smouldering, sometimes tempestuous nature” and mood swings from “a self-disciplined composure that approaches arrogance to an uneasy self-doubt that approaches panic,” betrays a “genteel, often diffident reserve,” all of which make her a “stimulating, unpredictable player.” Amidst her “anger,” “passion,” “streak of artistry,” and “fiercely competitive spirit,” which “makes her produce spectacular shots in dramatic rallies,” Gray (1975, p. 30) remarked of her tumultuous career “full of peaks and valleys. We never knew whether it was going to be ‘Brilliant Virginia’ or ‘Canon’s Daughter Explodes on Court.’”

Wade (1978, pp. 101-2) wrote of how these characterizations upset her; throughout her career, “there was scarcely a report that didn’t mention the word ‘temperamental.’ Sometimes I had ‘icy-blue eyes,’ sometimes ‘blazing,’ and most commonly I was ‘tempestuous,’ ‘explosive,’ ‘unpredictable,’ ‘arrogant,’ ‘sultry,’ ‘scowling,’ ‘glowering.’” She even located her own progress in 1977 in this context: “I think everyone has an outdated opinion about me and my temperament,” she said after her quarterfinal win; “This year, I’m incredibly determined and all I can do is try to prove they are wrong” (Parsons, 1977, June 28, p. 19).

British journalists during the 1977 Championships pondered her new approach. Oxby (1977, June 30, p.1) on the front page of The Daily Telegraph wrote of Wade’s semifinal victory as “testament to her mastery of her own volatile temperament,” while Tingay (1977, June 30, p. 30) remarked of her “nerves of iron…[she] wore a presumptive champion’s mantle with a crisp assurance rarely seen before.” She was a “brisk, efficient, cool, and careful” player; “[she] knew exactly where she was going and what she was doing” (Irvine, 1977, June 30, p. 18). The Observer’s Brasher (1977, July 3, p. 11) reflected after her final win: “Truly we have witnessed the transformation of a lady: A prickly, complex cocoon has opened and revealed what we least expected—a highly excited, completely professional British champion.” When previously Wade’s fragile mental state exposed traditional feminine weaknesses, Pignon (1977, July 2) likened the “new Wade” to a redesigned automobile: “The 1977 Virginia is a new model, designed to handle such pressures.” Thus, her “fury and vengeance accumulated through 16 frustrating years of failure” manifested itself in newfound “confidence,” “determination,” and a “dogged refusal to yield control” (Bodo, 1977, pp. 117–120). She was likened to a “tigress” that had “guts” (Rafferty, 1984, pp. 142, 147). In these ways, Wade was thus “performing” her British identity as an athlete, dominant and in control, but through a discourse that is typically reserved for male athletes.

Still, the gender media frame remained ever-present, as Wade’s new hairstyle was discussed. The Daily Mail described “the new Ginny, without the frills” (It’s the new Ginny, without the frills, 1977, June 15, p. 3) by commenting on the absence of her previous “cascade of dark hair that fell to her shoulders” and the “velvet bows which used to hold it in place on court.” “Spectators seeing her new hair style for the first time could have wondered who Miss Wade was,” wrote Tingay (1977, June 23, p. 34), “though they might have been reassured when she double faulted to lose her first game, for that was not unfamiliar.” Overall though, the narrative suggested a kind of connection between her new hairstyle and new, winning approach. Atkin (1977, p. 10) remarked of the “new Virginia Wade”: “Her long black hair had been trimmed to neck length and those notorious nervous spells had virtually been banished.” Similarly, Bodo (1977, p. 114) wrote that Wade’s “new hairstyle—a fluffy, light bob suggesting larks and wind-chimes—was but one indication of Wade’s conquest of Wimbledon anxieties and rationalizations which had become ritual.”

The 31-year-old Wade also remained infantilized, repeatedly referred to as Virginia or “Ginny” and, with Sue Barker, as a “girl” (Atkin, 1977, p. 13; Keating, 1977, July 2; Parsons, 1977, June 28, p. 19; Pignon, 1977, June 28; Tingay, 1977, June 27, p. 26; P. Williams, 1977, p. 34). Wensing and Bruce (2003, p. 393), however, suggested that in the case of Cathy Freeman, the use of the informal first name was probably more likely employed “as a way of connecting her to the Australian people.” The countless references to Wade as “Our Ginny” by the British press—a moniker also acknowledged by several American writers (Conley, 1977, p. 42; Heldman, 1977, p. 16; Lorge, 1977, p. 29)—supports this contention, thereby positioning Wade within the British imagined community. Furthermore, Vincent and Crossman (2012, p. 91) argue:

Journalists draw on invented traditions to stimulate interest and create a sense of unity and patriotism. This often manifests itself in the liberal use of personal pronouns…[that] describe “our” athletes or “our” team, in comparison with the “other” nations’ athletes or team.

Indeed, this “us-versus-them” invective was recognisable in the framing of Wade against the Dutchwoman Betty Stöve. The crowd singing and the “clicking shutters” of cameras

was [Wade’s] reward for winning a 96-minute session of Dutch roulette…About 2:40 yesterday a couple of million mums about the country were in the mood to hurl the Edam into the dustbin, throw the Delft at the TV, and send the kids out to dig up and trample on the tulips (James, 1977, July 2).⁹

As Vincent and Crossman (2012, p. 92) remark: “The imagined community follows the fortunes of athletes who have become symbolic national warriors, or patriots at play, during international competition.”

A Nation United Behind Wade?

The framing of Wade—après-transformation—as having courage, resilience, and the ability to overcome adversity afforded journalists an opportunity to attest to her cross-class appeal. Lake (2015, p. 269) surmised:

Wade embodied the collective frustrations of an entire nation year after year, and her ultimate success at the highest level and on the most profound occasion lifted the nation, and was undoubtedly influential in restoring pride to the beleaguered and long-suffering British tennis public.

It was not just in the sporting sphere, however, where Britain was understood to be struggling, and where Wade’s victory was presented as significant. Wade—an ageing maestro who achieved her ultimate ambition someway past her prime—was presented by some as embodying the characteristics of a nation coming to terms with its decline. The Guardian (“Love all in the hothouse,” 1977, July 2, p. 6) remarked of Wade’s victory: It was “the sort of day which almost encourages one to believe that if Virginia can finally win through after all these years, even the British economy may one day make it.” “It was a wonderful moment for a beleaguered country” wrote P. Williams (1977, p. 36) in Tennis Australia. Similarly, Barkow (1978, p. 20) described Wade’s victory as bringing “pride” to the “once mighty nation now downtrodden in many ways,” while Brebnor (1977, p. 27) likened Wade’s achievement in “[bolstering] the recently sagging British morale” to the 1945 VE-Day celebrations and England’s 1966 Football World Cup win: “It was a relief to see the old British spirit come back to the people during the fortnight. The papers were full of it.” Indeed, Tingay’s (1977, July 2, p. 23) repeated attempts to elevate Wade’s success as a British rather than simply personal “triumph” attests to the sense of its national significance.

It was not just Wade’s victory but her methods of achieving it that resonated. Despite being praised for having one of the strongest serves in women’s tennis (Conley, 1977, p. 47), her decision to “remodel” it—to conserve energy—for the 1977 Championships was considered “brave” (Atkin, 1977, p. 10), and the framing of Wade as courageous in the context of her previous failures suggested she possessed a set of indispensable qualities for Brits at this time, that is, the ability to look critically upon oneself, acknowledge improvements are needed, and repair what is broken. In these ways, Wade was seen to embody the “hopes and ambitions” of a nation; thus, for the press, it was considered more important to frame Wade as British than to frame her as female.

In the run-up to the final, the London-based press sought to extend her representation beyond the London metropolis to the rest of Britain. Clancy (1977, June 30) of The Daily Telegraph framed Wade’s semifinal victory against Evert as something uniting the imagined nation.

The world stopped somewhere around two o’clock yesterday afternoon as the length and breadth of Britain sat itself down, held its breath and willed Virginia Wade into the Wimbledon final. If moral support was any help out there…Virginia Wade had a reservoir stretching from Land’s End to John O’Groats. Offices and factories turned a blind eye as workers followed her every move via radio commentaries and portable TVs sneaked to work for the big occasion. Housewives deserted the high streets for the television…The whole nation is behind her.

For sure, this sense of sweeping cross-cultural representation was somewhat exaggerated, and this narrative overlooks the possibility that fans outside of the southern home counties (in and around London), not to mention racialized minorities or the working class, might not necessarily have identified with Wade so easily. Given her perceptible South African “twang,” her identity as English was certainly ambiguous despite some attempts by the British press to construct her as such—in relation to her home counties, upper-middle-class persona—and even the more recurrent claims to a more inclusive British identity conceded the fact that she became a resident of New York City in the mid-1970s to flee “the punishing tax regime and suffocating attention” that accompanied her fame in Britain (Dickson, 2017, March 29). Thus, in comparison to, say, Sue Barker, who was born, raised, and permanently resided in England and spoke with an ostensibly upper-middle-class English accent, Wade’s British identity needed massaging slightly to align with journalists’ aims to claim an apparently comprehensive “national” celebration of her success in 1977.

Indeed, all incongruities were swept aside, without exception, as a narrative was constructed among all the leading tennis writers, in Britain and abroad, of togetherness with Wade within an imagined community that crossed lines of geography alongside gender, class, and race. Journalists lent on an abundance of anecdotal evidence to assert its national significance. “All of Britain was focused on the [final] match,” wrote Heldman (1977, p. 18), and “as normal activities crawled to a halt, people stayed glued to their tellys and radios.” Rudd (2017) reflected that many schoolchildren were given a day off school to watch the match and people gathered together in front of television stores. The American reporter Lorge (1977, p. 27), in London covering the match, noted: “virtually everyone I spoke to”—including the “hall porter,” “telex operators,” “the newsagent,” and “the taxi driver”—said “Bring ‘Ginny’ luck.”¹⁰ By all accounts, Wade’s victory was adjudged “one of the most emotional scenes the Centre Court has ever witnessed” (Rafferty, 1984, p. 148), as it apparently invoked something poignant about the human spirit and the struggle to achieve something personally meaningful in spite of persistent obstacles. This was epitomised, for Jones and Bell (1977, p. 10), in what they described as the “unique” reaction of the Wimbledon crowd for Wade’s triumph: “With utterly spontaneous affection and a wry kind of pride, the crowd erupted. It was a memorable experience, this jollity so generous and yet so poignant because it was strangely at odds with the accepted English way of emotion.”

There is little reason to doubt the validity of the anecdotal evidence that attests to Wade’s potential appeal to some outside of her class, race, and gender—which was also reinforced by the sustained positive positioning of Wade in The Sun, a newspaper with a largely working-class readership—but these expressions of apparent national unity must be understood in the context of journalists’ efforts to, arguably, overstate her iconic positioning in order to “sell” a positive story about Britain at a time when the nation needed one. Had Britain been inundated with world-conquering sport stars at the time or had Wade not triumphed in such a nationalistic context, it is reasonable to assume that Wade may not have enjoyed the same constructed identity as a unifying sporting figure. Wade admitted this herself when interviewed for The Guardian in 2007: “Angela Mortimer and Ann Jones were great [British] players and won Wimbledon too. But because mine was that particular year and caused a sensation, I got the attention. I feel guilty about that. Life is all about timing” (cited in Moss, 2007, June 18). Thus, it is suggested that the broader historical context, set further within the uniquely British institution of Wimbledon, was largely responsible for this.

Conclusion

The findings of this article suggested that Virginia Wade’s achievement in winning the 1977 Wimbledon Championships was framed in ways that supplanted the traditional gendering of sport reporting, which ultimately facilitated her transcendence as a national icon. Both Wade’s national and gender identities were understood as “performances”—mainly through her behaviour, appearance, and play—but given the broader historical context of her achievement, it was her national identity that became the primary media frame. She was represented as a British athlete first and female second, as tennis writers sought to narrate her progress through the tournament by invoking ideas about how she represented an imagined (British) community. The recognisable invented traditions of Wimbledon were heightened through displays of banal nationalism in the context of its centenary and the Queen’s visit during jubilee year.

Through the mobilization of historical discourse, Wade’s “amateur” persona was drawn upon to elicit support from traditionalists, while her newfound professionalism—and ultimate success—was seen to reflect how Britain needed to adapt to recapture former glories, at a time when the nation was progressing through a pessimistic period of national politicoeconomic decline and subsequent collective introspection. Through the ways in which her performances were written about, Wade was represented as embodying several important features of British national identity—past, present, and future, and across class, gender, and racial divides—which facilitated her presentation as a unifying figure, though this was undoubtedly somewhat exaggerated.

The media frame of gender was still apparent for how Wade was represented—discussing her hairstyle and through subtle infantilization—but rather than being disempowering, much of this helped to articulate her transformation into a more successful player and to connect Wade more strongly with the British public. Wade was also presented as a nonthreatening female player at a time when women’s tennis was at the forefront of second-wave feminist activism. While Wade certainly enjoyed the benefits of what Billie Jean King and others had achieved for female players from the early 1970s (Mewshaw, 1983; Spencer, 1997),¹¹ she declined to identify herself with the cause, claiming: “I am not a feminist. I did not feel deprived as a woman and so did not become political in regard to women’s lib” (Barkow, 1978, p. 21). Like Cathy Freeman at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Wade’s status as a national icon depended on her being perceived as strong, emotionally stable, and in control, rather than weak or emotionally volatile, and also, perhaps most importantly, as a unifying force for Britain at a time when this was needed.

This analysis has demonstrated how Wade’s 1977 Wimbledon triumph supports the contention that female athletes could elicit nationalistic support—whereby national identity rather than gender becomes the primary media frame—under certain conditions. The timing of Wade’s victory within broader contexts, alongside how Wade’s approach, personality, behaviour, and play were described by the press as aligning with desirable “national characteristics”—both in the past and projecting into the future—were key factors to explain her apparent transcendence as a national icon, to the extent that she was seen to carry with her “the hopes and ambitions of the nation.”¹² Thus, in agreement with Wensing and Bruce (2003), a more nuanced understanding is needed of the intersectional dynamics of gender and national identity in sport-media framing. Future research in this area needs to foreground the personal and broader sociohistorical contexts in which the athlete’s success is achieved, to better understand under what conditions the traditional gendering of female athletes in the press may be subverted.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Robert J. Lake

Notes

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