2025-07-03
7 分钟The Economist Hello, I'm Rosie Blore.
I host The Intelligence, our daily news and current affairs podcast.
Welcome to Editor's Picks.
Here's an article we've chosen from the latest edition of The Economist.
A good way to understand Centre Court at Wimbledon is to put your cheek on the grass behind the white line where,
next week, the toes of the world's top tennis players will be.
The first thing you will notice is that the grass is cold,
dew-damp and bristly, like fake grass, not silky like a lawn.
It is also unnaturally level.
Flattened by laser-guided levellers and cut daily to eight millimetres by robot lawnmowers,
It feels less horticultural than architectural.
It stripes like an artistic exercise in vanishing points.
The next thing you might notice is an approaching security guard.
They do not, says Neil Stubbly,
Wimbledon's head of courts, like people rolling around on it.
England is the land of the lawn.
In English literature, history and life, the lawn looms large.
England swathed its country houses in lawns, took tea on them,
invented and perfected games like tennis and cricket to play on them.
It filled its land with lawns – there are around 24 million gardens in Britain,