In the eyes of many tennis fans around the world, the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club is a backward-thinking organization hopelessly attached to an outdated past. The idea that no tennis should be played on the “Middle Sunday” of the Wimbledon fortnight strikes your typical sports nut as absurd.

Sunday, after all, is a great day to draw big numbers… at the turnstiles, of course, but also in front of TV screens as well. Wimbledon’s brand name isn’t just meant for localized commerce at SW19; the tournament in the cozy village of the same name is also intended to popularize tennis and fetch significant advertising rates for the broadcasters that pay big rights fees to cover The Championships. Whether it’s the BBC in Britain, NBC or ESPN in the United States, or any other major international network around the globe, Sunday offers prime viewing exposure for an athletic centerpiece such as Wimbledon.

Keeping the grounds idle on “Middle Sunday” therefore robs the All England Club of a considerable financial windfall. Fans around the world are deprived of several hours in front of the tube, on a day when they’re more likely to be at home. The second Monday of Wimbledon might be considered the best single day on the Grand Slam tennis calendar, with all 16 ladies and gentlemen playing their fourth-round matches in a tennis buffet of bountiful proportions, but viewers spread across the planet can’t follow the action quite so easily on a Monday. If it’s been asked once, it’s been asked a million times: “WHY? Why keep Wimbledon quiet midway through the tournament, on a weekend afternoon when crowds would surge and TV ratings would increase?”

Surely this old, quaint idea has run its course, correct? Not so fast.

There’s an official political reason for the silent Sunday at SW19, but there’s also a very compelling tennis-centered reason why the no-play policy makes sense for this most traditional of tournaments.

First, the official political reason: Quite simply, Wimbledon–charming and unspoiled by the relentless forward march of time–values its relationship with its neighbors. The people who live in and near the village find themselves inconvenienced and overwhelmed during each day The Championships swing into action. Parking, shopping, and so many other basic components of everyday life, become adventures when Wimbledon arrives; therefore, the nod to an idle Sunday is a way of giving the village’s residents a much-needed break in the midst of this two-week sports spectacular.

As a point of comparison, the Olympic Games–wherever they land–never take a mid-course break, plunging the host city into a whirlwind of non-stop scrambling, but that massive event isn’t likely to return to a city other than a large and multi-ethnic urban center; at Wimbledon, where championship tennis is played at the beginning of each and every summer, the dynamic is different: Townsfolk need the annual respite from the event that puts the Big W on the map. Part of Wimbledon’s old-world charm is the tournament’s insistence on remaining true to a longstanding set of ideals, even while the All England Club modernizes its facilities and updates certain aspects of the tournament’s operations. By maintaining a good relationship with the neighborhood in which it resides, the entity known as the Wimbledon tournament keeps its positive place in the public mind. Playing on the Middle Sunday would unsettle the villagers who are willing to put up with two hectic weeks a year, as long as they get one breather in the middle of this fabulous fortnight. Seems like a small price to pay for an event that is beloved throughout the world.

While local neighborhood politics is indeed the main source of the no-play Sunday, the policy has an added benefit that might be underappreciated by the casual tennis fan, but is widely valued by the players who participate in The Championships: Balanced scheduling.

At the Australian Open, the two men’s singles semifinals are played on separate days, creating an unfair dynamic before the championship match at the end of the tournament. At the French Open, the men’s and women’s semis are played on the same day, but the quarterfinals in both draws are staged on different days. At the most recent Roland Garros event, Svetlana Kuznetsova didn’t just have to beat Serena Williams and Samantha Stosur on her way to the women’s final, and eventually the championship; the Kooze had to knock off Williams and Stosur on back-to-back days because of the quirk in the tournament’s schedule. And, at the U.S. Open, the women’s and men’s quarterfinals are played on different days, while the semifinals in both draws precede the final by only one day. The 24-hour turnaround for the men’s final (the women get about 30 hours due to a prime-time singles final) is the single most difficult hurdle for any ATP professional, anywhere and anytime. As one can see, three Grand Slam tournaments lack balanced scheduling during the second week of competition, when stars and studs should be well-rested heading into matches.

This is where the quiet Middle Sunday makes Wimbledon the fairest tournament of them all… literally.

The absence of a Middle Sunday–when some third- and fourth-round matches would be played at the other three slams–allows Wimbledon’s schedule to flow on an even track. The 16 women who play their fourth-round matches the following Monday are all put on court very early in the day. Having received at least one, and sometimes two, days of rest, the WTA Tour’s elite performers know that if they survive Monday, they’ll have to play their quarterfinals on Tuesday, otherwise known as “Ladies’ Day” at Wimbledon. Yes, there has to be a back-to-back grind somewhere in a tournament, and at the All England Club, the structure of the schedule puts players in the best position to cope. Putting the back-to-back doubleheader after an idle Sunday represents the most equitable solution among the four Grand Slams; stacking a quarterfinal on top of a fourth-rounder is much more desirable than putting a semifinal right after a quarter, or–worse–doing what the U.S. Open does by scheduling a final the day after a semi.

All in all, the policy of a quiet Middle Sunday allows the women–after their one back-to-back stretch–to play the semifinals and final with 48 hours’ rest, on relatively even terms. The men–who play later on the second Monday of the tournament–can all play their quarterfinals on Wednesday, followed by both semifinals on Friday and the final on Sunday. Perhaps Wimbledon insists on being old-fashioned in some ways, but there’s no question that the Big W gives its players more second-week rest than any of the other major tournaments. Tennis wins under that scenario, because the superstars who normally play at the business end of Grand Slam fortnights ought to be primed for battle. At Wimbledon, they are–more so than in Melbourne, Paris, or New York.

Go ahead, then: Label Wimbledon’s no-play Middle Sunday an idea whose time has long since passed. The merits of the policy actually suggest that the All England Club is wise to stick to this piece of a tournament’s proud tradition.

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