The Tennis Girl is a British poster of a female tennis player without underwear that has become a British pop icon. [1]
The Tennis Girl is a British poster of a female tennis player without underwear that has become a British pop icon. [1]
The photograph was taken by then-30-year-old Martin Elliott in September 1976 and features 18-year-old Fiona Butler [2] [3] (now Walker), [4] his girlfriend at the time. [5] The photo was taken at the University of Birmingham's tennis courts (formerly Edgbaston Lawn Tennis Club) on Edgbaston Park Road, Birmingham, England. The site is occupied now by the university's Tennis Court halls of residence. [5] [6] [7] [8] The dress was hand-made by Butler's friend Carol Knotts, from a Simplicity Pattern with added lace trim. [9] Knotts also supplied the tennis racquet, with all of the borrowed items later returned by Butler to Knotts after the shoot with a box of chocolates. [9] Butler borrowed the plimsoll shoes from her father, whilst the tennis balls were those used as playthings by her family's pet dog. [3]
The image was first published as part of a calendar by Athena for the 1977 Silver Jubilee, the same year Virginia Wade achieved the Wimbledon ladies' singles title. [10] Athena then negotiated a licence to distribute the image as a poster, [10] where from 1978 it achieved widespread distribution, selling over 2 million copies at £2 per poster. [1] [7] Although Athena went into administration in 1995, the picture remains a popular print.[ citation needed ]
Butler, who broke up with Elliot three years later, said in retrospect that she was not embarrassed about posing, nor bitter that she did not receive any royalties from the photo. [1] [8] Butler (now Walker) is a mother of three, who works as a freelance illustrator in Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire. [3] [9] Elliott died on 24 March 2010. [11] Knotts, now a barrister living in Gloucestershire, put the dress and racquet up for sale at an auction on 5 July 2014, the day of the 2014 Wimbledon Championships – Women's Singles final. [9] The dress was sold for £15,000, [12] [13] [14] [15] while the racquet went for between £1,000 and £2,000. The Athena Tennis Girl poster dress is now part of the Wimbledon Museum collection. [16]
In February 2015, Peter Atkinson from Marsh Gate, Cornwall, came forward to insist the photo was actually of his ex-wife, producing in evidence two items, one showing the same image and the other a close variant (seemingly taken on the same occasion), both of which were dated 1974, two years before Fiona Butler's photo shoot. [17] [18] Atkinson had previously made the claim, on numerous occasions, that his ex-wife was the actual model, and had done so during Elliott's lifetime. Elliott consistently denied such claims.
Over the years, the picture has been parodied by various people as diverse as former tennis star Pat Cash, singer and actress Kylie Minogue and comedian Alan Carr with actor Keith Lemon featuring his parody in his 2012 calendar. [1] [8]
As an election promise for the 2012 Belgian elections, Milka Malfait, a 22-year-old candidate from Sint-Truiden promised to publish a nude photo shoot when receiving 1,000 votes. She released a picture of herself in the Tennis Girl pose prior to the elections. [19]
In 2009, it was also parodied in the exit scene from episode 12 from the sixth series of Shameless when Lillian Tyler, a character played by Alice Barry, gets up and walks towards the door after winning a game console version of tennis. [20]
The background of Martin Rowson's cartoon, "Don't feed the Trolls", appears to show a poster of Donald Trump as Tennis Girl. [21]
The poster is one of the recurring motifs in the season 12 premiere of the British sitcom, Not Going Out.
The Wimbledon Championships, commonly called Wimbledon, is a tennis tournament organised by the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in collaboration with the Lawn Tennis Association annually in Wimbledon, London. It is chronologically the third of the four Grand Slam tennis events every year, held after the Australian Open and the French Open and before the US Open. It is the oldest tennis tournament in the world and is widely regarded as the most prestigious.
Martina Navratilova is a Czech-American former professional tennis player. Widely considered among the greatest tennis players of all time, Navratilova won 18 major singles titles, 31 major women's doubles titles, and 10 major mixed doubles titles, for a combined total of 59 major titles, the most in the Open Era. Alongside Chris Evert, her greatest rival, Navratilova dominated women's tennis for the first two-thirds of the 1980s.
Evonne Fay Goolagong Cawley is an Australian former world No. 1 tennis player. Goolagong was one of the world's leading players in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Roger Federer is a Swiss former professional tennis player. He was ranked world No. 1 in singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for 310 weeks, including a record 237 consecutive weeks, and finished as the year-end No. 1 five times. He won 103 singles titles on the ATP Tour, the second most since the start of the Open Era in 1968, including 20 major men's singles titles and six year-end championships.
John Patrick McEnroe Jr. is an American former professional tennis player known for his shot-making and volleying skills, his rivalries with Björn Borg and Jimmy Connors, and his confrontational on-court behavior, which frequently landed him in trouble with umpires and tennis authorities.
Oldbury is a market town in the metropolitan borough of Sandwell, in the county of the West Midlands, England. It is the administrative centre of the borough. At the 2011 census, the town had a population of 13,606, while the 2017 population of the wider built-up area was estimated at 25,488. Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council, which defines Oldbury Town as consisting of the wards of Bristnall, Langley, Oldbury, and Old Warley, gave the population as 50,641 in 2011.
Ann Shirley Jones, is a British former table tennis and lawn tennis champion. She won eight Grand Slam tennis championships in her career: three in singles, three in women's doubles, and two in mixed doubles. As of 2023, she serves as a vice president of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.
Maria Yuryevna Sharapova is a Russian former world No. 1 tennis player. She competed on the WTA Tour from 2001 to 2020 and was ranked world No. 1 in singles by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) for 21 weeks. She is one of ten women to achieve the career Grand Slam. She is also an Olympic medalist, having won silver in women's singles at the 2012 London Olympics. She has been considered as one of the best female tennis competitors of her generation.
Dorothy Edith Round, was a British tennis player who was active from the late 1920s until 1950. She achieved her major successes in the 1930s. She won the singles title at Wimbledon in 1934 and 1937, and the singles at the Australian Championships in 1935. She also had success as a mixed doubles player at Wimbledon, winning a total of three titles. After her wedding in 1937, she played under her married name, Mrs D.L. Little. During the Second World War, she played in North America and became a professional coach in Canada and the United States. Post-war, she played in British regional tournaments, coached, and wrote on tennis for newspapers.
Henry Wilfred "Bunny" Austin was an English tennis player. For 74 years he was the last Briton to reach the final of the men's singles at Wimbledon, until Andy Murray did so in 2012. He was also a finalist at the 1937 French Championships and a championship winner at Queen's Club. Along with Fred Perry, he was a vital part of the British team that won the Davis Cup in three consecutive years (1933–35). He is also remembered as the first tennis player to wear shorts.
Laura Robson is a British former professional tennis player. She debuted on the ITF Junior Circuit in 2007, and a year later won the Junior Wimbledon championships at the age of 14. As a junior, she also twice reached the final of the girls' singles tournament at the Australian Open, in 2009 and 2010. She won her first tournament on the ITF Women's Circuit in November 2008.
The Barack Obama "Hope" poster is an image of US presidential candidate Barack Obama designed by American artist Shepard Fairey. The image was widely described as iconic and came to represent Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. It is a stylized stencil portrait of Obama in solid red, beige and blue, with the word "progress", "hope", or "change" below.
Naomi Broady is a British former tennis player.
Athena is a British art retailer and retail chain, which was founded in 1964. Today it sells fine art prints from a variety of UK artists. However it is best known for its iconic posters such as L'Enfant, The Lord of the Rings from 1976 by Jimmy Cauty, the Tennis Girl poster from 1976 and "Beyond City Limits", published in the 1990s. The company's popular success divided opinion amongst intellectuals and art critics who were uncertain as to whether these works were too vulgar and populist to be considered art.
Heather Miriam Watson is a British professional tennis player. A former British No. 1, Watson has won nine titles over her career, including the mixed-doubles title at the 2016 Wimbledon Championships, partnering Henri Kontinen, making her the first British woman to win a major title since Jo Durie in 1991, and the first to win a Wimbledon title since Durie in 1987. In October 2012, Watson won her first WTA Tour singles title at the Japan Women's Open, becoming the first British woman to win a WTA tournament singles title since Sara Gomer in 1988.
Tímea Babos is a Hungarian professional tennis player who is a former world No. 1 in doubles.
Tomasz Bednarek is a professional tennis player from Poland.
Katie Charlotte Boulter is a British professional tennis player and currently the British No. 1 in women's singles. On 4 November 2024, she reached her best singles ranking of world No. 23. On 4 November 2024, she peaked at No. 282 in the WTA doubles rankings. She has won three singles titles on the WTA Tour as well as seven singles titles and four doubles titles on the ITF Women's Circuit.
Katie Swan is a British tennis player. She has won 11 ITF singles titles and one in doubles. Her peak world ranking in singles is 118 and her highest in doubles is 293. When she made her debut, Swan was the youngest player to represent Great Britain in the Fed Cup.
Elizabeth Ernest-James is a Welsh former professional tennis player.
