Alan Mills

Who is Alan Mills?

Alan Ronald Mills, CBE born 6 November 1935 in Stretford, Lancashire, England, was a former tennis player and tournament referee for the Wimbledon tennis championships from 1982 to 2005. Although each individual tennis match was controlled by an on-court umpire, Alan Mills ran the entire tournament. However, perhaps he was most well known because the decision to stop play in the event of rain was that of Mills, and so his face was familiar to millions of television viewers worldwide, in the corner of Centre Court, clutching his two-way radio and glancing upwards at the sky in search of rainclouds.