“See you in COURT,” declares a message on a shop window on Wimbledon High Street, featuring a mannequin dressed as a barrister in black gown, wig, wing-collar shirt, white socks and tennis shoes. She is hovering in some state of skewed levitation above an AstroTurf tennis court, her racket making contact with a Slazenger ball.

In the real world, this statement from Peacock & Co solicitors would be a heavy-hitting pronouncement. In a bona fide tennis scenario, a coach would be itching to get to work on the player’s soft grip and less-than-ideal stance.

But in the wonderful world of the annual Wimbledon Village Tennis Windows competition – surely the most niche and uplifting of subcultures inspired by Grand Slam tennis – Peacock & Co’s slogan amounts to a high-stakes challenge to the 60-odd other local businesses hoping to take top honours.

This is the ninth edition of the popular window-dressing contest created and organised by Kimberley Salmassian, and a brilliant way for the community to enter the spirit of The Championships while ‘championing’ their own niche business services with verbal and visual puns. 

“A+CE YOUR MA+THS” is the message from the Mathnasium Learning Centre.

“Game, sip, match” urges a window at the Rose & Crown pub while Wimbledon Village Stables, tucked behind the Dog & Fox pub, has a tennis scoreboard detailing an imaginary match between Novak Trot-ovic and Rafael Neigh-dal.  

The rules are simple and absolutely open to interpretation. The windows must have a Wimbledon tennis theme – a riff on purple and green colours, strawberries and cream, the all-white clothing, et cetera. There is much wordplay on ‘love’ and ‘serving’, lots of installations featuring rackets and balls, and tennis-themed captions that really push the sport’s lingo to project the nature of their trade. 

“Steak point!” says a cartoon pig somewhat inexplicably over a barbecue at Provenance Village Butchers, to which a horned beef cow replies “Snout!” 

You cannot be serious!

Breaking news for 2022… The Wombles are back in force. The furry, pointy-nosed creatures created by local resident Elisabeth Beresford for a classic children’s book series in late 1968 are beautifully depicted as tennis players in the window of Kevin Bassett Wealth Management.

Sustainability is also a key element. Down at the Nordic Balance physiotherapy clinic, an anatomical skeleton, dressed in umpire’s regalia, juggles balls in front of two enormous polystyrene rackets. Talk about a labour of love (that word again): co-owner Joanne Meyer, ordered special tools from eBay for the job and spent three weeks in the clinic basement crafting the rackets with their immaculate strings.

Peacock & Co also prioritised recycling for 2022. “The gown and wig are borrowed from a practising QC, our court is an off-cut and the backdrop home-sprayed,” says Rebecca Cox. “Sue, our glamorous model, joins us for her second year after a career as a shop-window dummy in high fashion and bridal wear.”

Last year, “Sue” was dressed to faithfully replicate Kim Cattrall’s role in a 1987 movie called Mannequin, in which the actress played a beautiful Egyptian trapped in the body of a department store model as she sat in an umpire’s chair in a floppy red hat. An image, posted on Twitter as #ItsaWimbledonthing, prompted a response from The Sex and the City actress herself. 

Glamour is always guaranteed in Joseph Azagury’s window. The shoe designer’s 2022 tribute to the competition down the hill and the British No.1 is a stiletto-heeled sandal called “Emma”, fashioned from green suede, trimmed in white and adorned with a mini tennis ball on the back of the heel strap. No foot faults called here!

Ten judges score each participating business according to innovation, creativity, effort and humour, then submit their top 10. Prizes include Centre Court tickets, dinner for two at The Ivy, luxury food and champagne hampers, beauty treatments, personal training sessions and wine-tasting experiences. The hotly anticipated awards party takes place on Tuesday 5 July at the Rose & Crown.

So who are this year’s favourites to win?  

Knight Frank's window is a charming and exuberant melange of Wimbledon-themed people and props, with bunting, umbrellas, champagne, strawberries and Panama hats.

Older tennis fans are showing appreciation for Cancer Research UK’s “That 70s Show” tribute - which has used charity contributions to dress models as icons Billie Jean King, Bjorn Borg and Chrissie Evert - and for the caricatures of Dolly (Volley) Parton and Elton (the Racket Man) John at Hemingways, the local bar. 

For attention to detail, beauty salon Take Time is hard to beat. On either side of a vintage tennis poster on an easel, co-owner Emma Lockett-Smith has filled a giant tennis ball with green and purple nail varnishes and a strawberry-shaped basket with red nail varnishes.

For big and bold, Italian restaurant Cent Anni’s commissioned work from decorative artist John Bicklow is ace. From a distance it looks like a large cup of strawberries and cream and a plate of spaghetti, but look closely and you’ll see the cup is the men’s singles trophy and the plate is the Venus Rosewater Dish. A champion’s touch indeed. 

You can visit the windows to interact in person by taking selfies and posting online to take part in tennis-themed quizzes. Prizes range from luxury handbags at Phoenix Style to Apple AirPods from Mathnasium and giant Jellycat bunnies from Postmark.

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Following along from home this year? You can still experience the classic Wimbledon atmosphere on the Virtual Hill, presented by our Official Partner American Express.