Despite being among the wealthiest athletes in the world, Wimbledon's biggest names all clamour over the same must-have freebie at Wimbledon: the tournament towel.
At least 4,000 towels go missing each year as players - including the likes of Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams - stash away as many as they can fit in their holdalls.
However, this year the All England Club has come up with a new ploy to put off younger players from joining the craze - by offering them plain white towels, instead of the senior players' brightly-coloured versions.
George Spring, Wimbledon's Court Attending Manager, told how he has come to expect that the club will only get back three quarters of the 6,000 towels they produce for the tournament each year.
He said: "The juniors for many years I believe were having a competition to see how many they can get. But our policy now is that if they do ask for another towel we will give them a white towel and they soon don't ask for another when that happens.
"We are trying to break in the next generation of towel connoisseurs." 英语新闻
