The photograph was taken by then-30-year-old Martin Elliottin September 1976 and features 18-year-old Fiona Butler, his girlfriend at the time. The photo was taken at the University of Birmingham's tennis courts in Edgbaston Park Road, Birmingham, England. The site is occupied now by the university's Tennis Court halls of residence. The dress was hand-made by Butler's friend Carol Knotts, from a Simplicity Pattern with added lace trim. Knotts also supplied the tennis racquet, with all of the borrowed items later returned by Butler to Knotts after the shoot with a box of chocolates. Butler borrowed the plimsolls from her father, whilst the tennis balls were those used as playthings by her family's pet dog.
History
The image was first published as part of a calendar by Athena for the 1977 Silver Jubilee, the same year Virginia Wade achieved the Wimbledonladies' singles title. Athena then negotiated a licence to distribute the image as a poster, where from 1978 it achieved widespread distribution, selling over 2 million copies at £2 per poster. Although Athena went into administration in 1995, the picture remains a popular print to buy and can be found at other retailers like Amazon, AllPosters & King and McGaw. Butler, who broke up with Elliot three years later, said in retrospect that she was not embarrassed about posing, nor bitter that she did not receive any royalties from the photo. Butler is a mother of three, who works as a freelance illustrator in Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire. Elliott died on 24 March 2010. Knotts, now a barrister living in Gloucestershire, put the dress and racquet up for sale at an auction on 5 July 2014, the day of the 2014 Wimbledon Championships – Women's Singles final. The dress was sold for £15,000, while the racquet went for between £1000-£2000. Athena Tennis Girl poster dress is now part of the Wimbledon Museum collection.
Subject doubts
In February 2015, Peter Atkinson from Marsh Gate, Cornwall, came forward to insist the photo was actually of his ex-wife, producing in evidence two items, one showing the same image and the other a close variant, both of which were dated 1974, two years before Fiona Butler's photo shoot.
Parody
Over the years, the picture has been parodied by various people as diverse as former tennis star Pat Cash, comedian Alan Carr and singer Kylie Minogue, with actor Keith Lemon featuring his parody in his 2012 calendar. It was also imitated in an advertisement for a tennis video game called Davis Cup World Tour for the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive. As an election promise for the 2012 Belgian elections, a 22-year-old Belgian woman from Sint-Truiden promised to publish a nude photo shoot when receiving 1,000 votes. She released a picture of her in the Tennis Girl pose prior to the elections. In 2009, it was also parodied in the exit scene from episode 12 from the sixth series of Shameless when Lillian Tyler, a character played by Alice Barry, gets up and walks towards the door after winning a game console version of tennis. On 9 May 2016, it was displayed by Mark Hamill on Twitter from his @HamillHimself account as Princess Leia walking toward Tatooine buildings with a blaster in her hand instead of a tennis racquet. The background of Martin Rowson's cartoon, "Don't feed the Trolls", appears to show a poster of Donald Trump as Tennis Girl
