With the curtain closing on the All England Lawn Tennis Club’s annual championships at Wimbledon, it’s another successful year in the books for the real king of Centre Court—Rufus the Hawk.
For any Nigels reading this, it will likely be a case of heard it all before, but us Yankees might not know that a family of falconers has been training Harris’ Hawks for use as pigeon control officers on Wimbledon’s grass courts for 20 years.
Taking over from the previous hawk, Hamish, for 15 years Rufus has spent a few hours every morning during the 42-day-long tournament scaring away pigeons that may have entered the grass courts to roost during the night. Rufus doesn’t hurt the pigeons, but he scares them away by triggering a flight or fight response which can take days to get over.
It all began back in 1999 when Donna Davis was watching a match of the eventual champion Pete Sampras. A plague of pigeons was repeatedly disrupting the action and gave Donna the idea to call the organizers and offer her services.
Typically, Donna, or another member of the Davis family, Imogen, will begin the day on Court No.1 and carry on clearing all the courts of pigeons who fly down to munch on the grass seed. Small bells on his feet alert the Davises below where he is heading.
Rufus would have enjoyed a memorable year. Having seen some exceptional performances in his time, the Gentlemen’s Singles Final between GOAT Novak Djokovic and young-blood and world #1 Carlos Alcaraz will certainly be up there.
The Spaniard denied the best to ever do it his 8th Wimbledon title, and 24th Grand Slam of his career with a mixture of raw power and confidence in a tightly contested match. Indeed, even as late as the 9th game of the 4th set, each man had won the same number of points: 134. Djokovic had trouble with a number of Alcaraz’s brilliant slices and drop-shots, and was unable to take enough games off of Alcararz’ service, which was routinely clocked at 130 mph.
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The Ladies’ Singles Final was hardly less memorable, as the Czech Republic’s Marketa Vondrousova became the first unseeded player since Billie Jean King in 1963 to make it to the final or win the tournament. She took the tile over Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur, the first Arab or North African to ever make it to a Women’s single’s final in any tournament. While not a washout, Vondrousova, who finished last season ranked 99th in the world, won back-to-back sets 6-4.
Though it’s believed Rufus enjoyed the Gentlemen’s Singles Final more, because in 2019, he was cheering for Federer.
WATCH the story below from the Wimbledon YouTube…
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