Former tennis player Denise Parnell is set to become Wimbledon’s first ever female referee in the tournament’s 125 history. Parnell, 62, will replace Gerry Armstrong as the top official at the tournament after this summer.
The referee is responsible for the biggest calls in matches, supervising all aspects of a tournament, including managing the draws and schedules, enforcing the rules and making sure everything runs smoothly and in the spirit of fairness.
Parnell has worked as one of Armstrong’s assistant referees since 2006 — just six years after she received the International Tennis Federation Silver Badge Referee.
In the same year, she was awarded the highest qualification of ITF Gold Badge Referee, which is held by fourteen women out of the fifty Gold Badge holders across the world.
Prior to Armstrong’s appointment, Andrew Jarrett was the referee at Wimbledon for fourteen years.
In his forthcoming memoir, Championship Points, Jarrett describes the referee’s role as “overseeing it all, making the draws, deciding the orders of play, fining the bad boys and girls and managing the whole tennis side of an event”.
The latest appointment of Parnell is a positive step towards equalising the gender landscape of the tournament. In 2020, Sally Bolton became the All England Club’s first female chief executive.
In January this year, former director of sport at the 2012 London Olympics, Debbie Jevans, was appointed as the club’s vice chair.