Paul Zimmer isn’t used to this. For the past four decades, he has spent the lion’s share of June and July in the south-west suburbs of Paris and London, photographing the cream of the tennis crop at Roland Garros and Wimbledon. But in this COVID-interrupted 2020 season, he is currently back in Germany, awaiting the sport's return.

There is still hope he will make it to Paris for the rescheduled French Open at the end of September, but for the first time since 1978 there will be no visit to the All England Club, no hunkering down next to his fellow ‘shooters’ in their prized photo positions, the best seats on Centre Court.

“It’s for me a sad moment,” he admits. “You feel it. I said to my wife, the only positive thing in the whole situation is that I have spent this summertime at home, which I haven’t had in 40 years. I haven’t spent June and July at home since 1977 – I was always in Paris and London. But still, I miss Wimbledon. It’s the highlight of my year.”

It is 48 years since Zimmer took his first forays into sports photography. His maiden ‘assignment’ came at a skiing World Cup event in 1972, aged just 14. He was still a teenager in 1975 when he first met an eight-year-old Boris Becker and Steffi Graf, just six, at a junior event near his hometown of Stuttgart. Within a decade, he would be photographing the prodigious duo at SW19, chronicling a combined 10 singles triumphs between them: three for Becker, seven for Graf.

“Wimbledon, it’s a holy place, one of the icons of global sport,” Zimmer said. “For the players, if you win there you are made, you’re immortal. With other tournaments it’s not the same. It’s great to win any Grand Slam, but Wimbledon is the best. And you see it in your pictures. The celebrations after winning Wimbledon are always very special.

“And for us, it’s also the most beautiful place to take pictures. We have beautiful light around sunset, and we also go at around 6:00am to shoot features with the sunrise. Just watching the ground staff cutting the grass is so wonderful, with those colours – that’s what makes the place unique. Paris is also very beautiful, but no other tournaments can compare. And even among those two, Wimbledon stands out.”

'I haven’t spent June and July at home since 1977 – I was always in Paris and London. But still, I miss Wimbledon. It’s the highlight of my year'

Like so many photographers, Zimmer talks about his craft with a duality of passion – part artist, part artisan. Tools of the trade are intrinsically linked to his memories of Championships gone by – that perfect, rain-free fortnight in the early 1990s that provided the ideal backdrop; memories of scrambling to replace camera rolls with super-sensitive film as twilight set in; and his mad dash to retrieve a suitable lens in the closing stages of 2008 final between Roger Federer and eventual champion Rafael Nadal.

“By the end, there was almost no light,” he recalls. “The match kept going and going, and you had no clue if it would end, let alone how. It got so dark that the cameras weren’t good enough to cope with it – there are so few really great pictures from the match point as a result. Today it would be much easier, because even since then the technology of digital cameras has advanced so much. But that was a real challenge. Some photographers caught a flash from spectators’ cameras afterwards, which produced a handful of really excellent pictures. But the whole day, the whole final, was really overwhelming.”

A Grand Slam photographer’s days are long and nights often longer, with perhaps three hours’ sleep before another day of shooting, editing, labelling and filing. But Zimmer ensures that before each final he finds an hour of calm – a chance to focus, to figure out which shots to look for from his position on the court, to pre-empt a moment of magic.

“There are some things that only happen at Wimbledon,” he said. “One of my favourite things to shoot is players diving. It’s so athletic. Boris was a great diver. Another special shot is players celebrating with the trophy from the clubhouse with the public. Then there are those incredible gymnastic shots, like Novak Djokovic almost doing the splits – just unbelievable. And of course, that picture of Stefan Edberg.”

Stefan Edberg (SWE) shot by Paul Zimmer in 1988 - tap to expand

The picture in question, which sits at the top of this article, is the image Zimmer ranks as the best of his career. It captures the moment Edberg clinched his first Wimbledon title with a four-set victory over Becker in 1988, his head hovering above the court as he falls back in celebration. But that is only half the story of this otherworldly photo – one that owes its origins to good behaviour and a drinks cooler, and its untimely demise to an elevator shaft.

'One of my favourite things to shoot is players diving. It’s so athletic. Then there are those incredible gymnastic shots, like Novak Djokovic almost doing the splits – just unbelievable'

There is a hierarchy to the positions awarded to photographers for a Wimbledon final. For the first 10 days of the tournament, accredited photographers may take up reserved positions on any court – a marked improvement on the access Zimmer remembers in his own early years. But as the finals approach and positions become premium property, the assigning of pitches is formalised. Past experience didn’t give him much hope of securing a prime position.

“Normally the first 15 places on both sides of the court, so 30 places in all, were given to the British press – the foreigners had to sit somewhere else,” he explained. “But the photo chief came to me and said, ‘Your friend Boris is playing in the final, and you’ve never complained, so I want to give you a good place – I just cannot move the British.’

“On Centre Court there is a spot where the stewards or the military guards would normally stand, a metal platform directly opposite the umpire’s chair. That’s where he put me, sat on a plastic Coca Cola box with a bit of green carpet on top.”

It may not sound glamorous, but to Zimmer the improvised perch was perfection: “I was elevated above all the other photographers, with a 100% view of both sides of the court.”

The match ended with a heart-stopping rally as Becker, twice champion in 1985 and 1986 before being stunned in the second round a year later, was finally undone in his third final by Edberg, a two-time Australian Open winner, coming from a set down to win his first Wimbledon title. Having lined up a short, floating ball popped up off a desperate volley from the stranded Swede, Becker blasted his backhand at his opponent from point-blank range, but found the net.

'Edberg was almost on the floor with the head only a little bit above the grass, like a limbo dancer'

“After the final point, as Stefan Edberg celebrated, I took one picture,” Zimmer said. “You have to remember, our cameras had no motor drives in those days, so every time you took a picture you had to wind the film to take another. There was no auto-focus, all manual. And of course, you don’t see the image, so you have to estimate what is happening. You wind the film on, and then you see the field again, and I saw he was falling backwards. I waited a split-second, and took a second photo.

“From 100 photographers, three people had the moment when Edberg was almost on the floor with the head only a little bit above the grass, like a limbo dancer.”

Zimmer’s image would eventually appear in 180 newspapers worldwide, and earned him both the prestigious International Sports Press Association’s Best Sport Photograph Award and Germany’s Best Sports Photo Award in 1989. He sent a copy to Edberg to commemorate the Swede's victory.

“And the most horrible thing is, I have never seen the original photo in my life,” he said. The picture above is not the image Zimmer captured, but a scan taken from the printed version: an imperfect facsimile of his perfect shot.

“After the final I had to give the film to my editor, who went to Munich to develop it. Once it was printed and the picture was entered into the award contests, they discovered they had lost the slide. So instead, they made big prints from the scanned picture. I gave one to Stefan, another was entered into the contests by my editor, but I never saw an image from the original negative.

“With digital images it’s almost impossible to lose a photo, but back then if you lost an original it was lost forever. And the duplicates are never as good in quality as the original. Ten years later, I heard it may have fallen down an elevator shaft.”

The digital age has changed the art of sports photography. Gone are the days of purchasing and processing up to 500 36-shot camera films over two weeks; today photographers may take as many as 4000 shots a day, aided by rapid multiple exposures, auto focus, instant review panels on the cameras themselves, and high-speed internet lines on court for immediate distribution.

'With digital images it’s almost impossible to lose a photo, but back then if you lost an original it was lost forever'

“Now, this picture is much easier to take,” admits Zimmer, who has been shooting with digital cameras since 2000. “Almost everybody would have it. You can’t be as proud as you were before, because it was challenging back then.”

For all that has changed, and for all the uncertainty he and his colleagues behind the lens are currently facing, Zimmer’s love of the All England Club endures. All being well, he will be back in 2021, checking if the covers have been taken off Court 14 from the window of his annual base before taking the minute-long stroll to the gates to begin chronicling another chapter at the sport’s spiritual home.

“For me, it is most similar to Augusta, home of The Masters in golf,” he adds. “If you reach it, whether as a player, journalist or photographer, it’s fantastic. It is a privilege to be there. It’s the pinnacle of our sport.”