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Every day Mark Kuhn delivers the cooler box filled with ice to Centre Court. He follows up by bringing the towel allocation to the players’ chairs.
As a volunteer court attendant at The Championships, the 65-year-old corn and soybean farmer from Iowa is living a dream that began in 1962 when he listened to BBC World Service broadcasts with his grandfather, Albert Bramer.
“One day when I was a ten-year-old boy, we discovered Wimbledon on his short wave radio and it lit a passion,” he says, walking towards Centre Court in the green polo shirt worn by the team of court attendants, explaining on the way past hanging boxes of petunias and visitors sipping Pimm's that it was the British accent of Dan Maskell that appealed back in the 1960s, in partnership with the colourful commentary of the former American player Jack Kramer.
“It wasn’t so much the play that fascinated me but the Queen’s English call of the game, the way they kept score and all the tradition they talked about.
After that, when I did the chores on the cattle feed lot, I dreamt about building a grass tennis court that resembled Wimbledon’s Centre Court.”
The boyhood dream never died. By coincidence, a farm in Iowa was the fictional setting for the 1989 film, Field of Dreams, starring Kevin Costner.
If a mythical farmer in his home state could carve a baseball field carved from a cornfield, Kuhn reasoned, why couldn’t he build a replica Centre Court for real?
A friend’s premature death made him see life is short; it was time to act on his dream. He researched turf grass management at Iowa State University and made plans for construction, which got underway in July 2002.
Supported by his wife Denise, sons Mason and Alex, Kuhn’s labour of love produced a whimsical copy of Centre Court – complete with purple and green colour scheme, replica wooden Edwards net posts and umpire’s chair, and a courtside strawberry patch. It is named the All Iowa Lawn Tennis Club (AILTC).
Since then, the Kuhn family have welcomed up to 200 groups a year to the immaculately maintained court. Play is free of charge.
You just email [email protected] and the family sort out a plan to share the magic of Centre Court with other grass court fans, offering guests Pimm's and strawberries and cream.
People have come from far afield, leaving comments such as David Wilson’s from Tyner, Kentucky - “Your dream has fulfilled my dream of playing on a grass court”; or Ben Swidenbank’s from London – “The ‘All Iowa’ is beautiful... like an English garden in the middle of America.”
As he tended his court of dreams – set on that very same cattle feedlot of old - Kuhn wondered every day what it would be like to dress the original Centre Court, to apply the lines and mow the grass.
In 2011, he wrote to the Head Groundsman offering his services as a ground staff intern and – to cut a long story short – he has spent the last three years helping out around the grounds. This year is his first as a fully-accredited court attendant, and as he goes about his duties, he still listens to Live@Wimbledon to commemorate those days when the radio delivered this fantastical other world.
“Mark has so much passion and love for Wimbledon, which you see from what he’s doing on his farm, that it’s hard to resist nurturing his dream,” says George Spring, who managed the court attendants. “The fact he is here says so much about what Wimbledon is all about. I mean, he’s not knocking on the doors of Flushing Meadow... Court attendants are the future of England in terms of what they go on to pursue. We have barristers and doctors and it is good to add someone like Mark in the mix who brings the passion.”
Has Centre Court London SW19 lived up to Kuhn’s boyhood dreams in reality? “Oh yes. There is nothing like Centre Court Wimbledon," he says, full of respect. "It’s the perfection, the attention to detail, the honouring of traditions. It’s a magic place.”
