Wimbledon champion reaches 100

Wimbledon's oldest surviving champion will be 100 years old in August but she still loves to put her feet up with a bowl of ice cream and watch tennis all day on the television.

Phyllis King does wish today's tennis players would not take the game so seriously. It was a sport, not a business in her day.

"I can't remember querying a line call. I may have looked doubtful but nothing more than that," King told Reuters before settling down to a day of armchair viewing.

"I think it has become too serious. It is not quite the sport it was. Wrong decisions are so important on court. That is when tempers get frayed," she said.

Phyllis King was Miss Mudford when she won the Wimbledon women's doubles with Dorothy Shepherd-Brown in 1931. She took part in the tournament 16 times and her last appearance, at the age of 48, was in 1953.

"When I won, we had a very nice gold medal and a 10 pound shopping voucher," King recalled.

"You weren't allowed to buy any item of domestic necessity. You had to buy a luxury item. I used to have a sports account at (department store) Harrods so I would use up my vouchers there."

For her birthday in August, King has invited a few friends and family along to her house in the southern English county of Surrey.

"I am very pleased to see anyone who drops in. I think it has been too long an innings," she said.

King, who speaks in a voice as strong as anyone half her age, played tennis well into her eighties but has now reluctantly hung up her racket.

The All England Club offered to send a car to her home and have her chauffeured to the tournament but she felt the journey to Wimbledon would be too tiring at her age.

She does, however, revel in the marathon television coverage.

"I dash out and get some ice cream and settle down to watch all day long. That is jolly, jolly good," she said.

Tennis purists may carp at today's power game and hanker for more halcyon days of greater finesse but King loves the thunderous servers.