The 19th-century textile designer William Morris (STAY WITH ME HERE) had a useful rule of thumb: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. I bear Morris’ core tenet in mind when I visit the home of a new acquaintance; it helps me decide whether we can ever truly be friends. I also use it when I take the measure of a professional tennis trophy, which I do every time I watch a tournament winner heft aloft someone else’s idea of beauty, or utility, or both.
Of course, “useful” was a simpler concept for Morris, who as it happens was a resident of Wimbledon but no tennis player himself. Unlike, say, a butter churn, a trophy must act as a proxy for all the work that led up to this win; all the junior tennis and all the early-morning workouts and all the Doughnuts Not Eaten. It must be shorthand for “I was the better player today,” and “This is the best competition I could have entered this week,” so it should celebrate the place as well as the victor. It must also be reasonably hoistable™. That’s a tall order for an inanimate object, but some trophies have managed to do all that and, sometimes, more. What follows is a by-no-means exhaustive list of the most, and least, successful tennis awards.