By James Zug
During the World Championship Challenge in Newport, the USCTA gave the 2025 Plimpton Prize to Timothy Edwards. He is the world’s leading tennis photographer. For nearly twenty years, Edwards has taken stunning action photographs of court tennis. Based in London, he has shot every Challenge starting in 2014, as well as seventeen British Opens and numerous other local, national and international tournaments. “The lasting images of our game in the past two decades will have come from Tim’s camera,” said Jim Zug, during an awards ceremony at a tournament dinner in the Horseshoe at the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
The Plimpton Prize is annually given out for literary and artistic excellence in the game of court tennis. It was created in the weeks after George Plimpton’s death in the autumn of 2003. For more than forty-five years Plimpton was an avid, skilled tennis player at the Racquet & Tennis Club. He played in more than one U.S. Open and loved the game and its personalities. Each year he spoke at the USCTA annual dinner, regaling the audience with stories and jokes. Plimpton was one of the literary giants of New York, and among his many books is the one he edited with Pierre Etchebaster, the 1971 classic Pierre’s Book which was just reprinted last year.
Recent Plimpton Prize honorees include Mike Garnett, David Best, Richard Travers, Kathryn Ronaldson McNicol, Alan Chalmers and last year’s winner John Schneerson. Edwards was the fourth photographer to be honored, after Michael Do in 2007, Freddy Adam in 2011 and in 2016 the founder of the Plimpton Prize, Charles Johnstone.
