Wimbledon winners will pocket �1.1m each

By Mike Dickson

Last updated at 2:14 AM on 20th April 2011

The rich will get richer at Wimbledon this year with the likes of Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams getting an eyewatering ?1.1 million in prize money if they were to defend their singles titles in early July. 

Any player getting to the third round or better will enjoy an austerity-beating 10 per cent pay hike at what will be the 125th anniversary edition of The Championships taking place from June 20. 

First round losers, however, will get 'only' a 2.2 per cent increase to ?11,500, and it was that group, in the shape of the anticipated batch of early British defeats, that drew most of the attention at the official preview of this summer's event.

Just champion: Rafael Nadal won his second Wimbledon title last summer

In his first public pronouncements as the new Chairman of the All England Club, Philip Brook was repeatedly challenged on the Club's laissez-fair stance on the chronic state of British tennis. 

Every year the profits from Wimbledon fund the domestic game to the tune of around ?25-30 million with little apparent return, but Brook insisted he was happy, like his predecessors, to leave the growing of the sport to the hapless Lawn Tennis Association. 

This despite the worst performance from home players in history last year when everyone bar Andy Murray was wiped out in the first round. 

'It is not our job to dictate or influence the way the money is spent,' said Brook. 'Our job is to focus on making sure that we continue to put on the best tournament in the world.'

There is little doubt that the All England Club is achieving that ambition but when there is a major summer football event every other year competing for attention it becomes more and more obvious that the tournament's potential is being restricted by recurring British failure.

One of the sub-texts in all this is Wimbledon's desperation not to tarnish its brand by getting too involved in trying to solve the problems of the domestic game beyond its free coaching programme for thousands of local schoolchildren.

Murray has withdrawn from this week's Barcelona Open after being advised to rest his troublesome elbow for four or five days, meaning he is expected to be fit for the Madrid Masters at the start of next month. 

The 23-year-old Scot is unlikely to find himself playing in the latest new court being unveiled at Wimbledon this year, the new 2,000-seater Number Three, on the site of the old 'Graveyard of the Seeds' Number Two. Like much of the phenomenal development of recent years, bar the Centre Court, it is gleamingly functional but bereft of much style or character.

In an unusual venture into politics the All England Club revealed that, along with golf and Formula One bodies, it is lobbying the government about the tax treatment of individual sportsmen when they compete in this country. 

At present someone like Rafael Nadal, who spends at least a month in the UK every year, has to pay tax on a month's worth of his annual endorsement earnings, wherever they are from, and the fear is this will deter top athletes of all sports from competing in Britain.

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