Your Wimbledon questions answered before the finals

We're into the final weekend of Wimbledon, and BBC Sport has continued to ask for your questions.

Hundreds of you have been in touch and we've picked out some of the best to take a look at.

Read on for the final instalment from our Ask Me Anything team.

Do racquet strings ever break? If so, how?

Bertie Arnold

They do break - and when they do, it is more likely to be friction over force.

Paul Skipp - head of the Wimbledon stringing team - told us the strings most commonly break because they have been rubbing against each other.

"It's going to be the friction," he said. "As they move, they slide, and they cause the friction. When you hit spin and they slide back and forth, that's the thing that will cause the strings to break."

Players generally have their racquets restrung after every match. The tension they ask for can differ depending on the surface they are playing on, as well as the weather conditions, which can affect the speed at which the ball moves.

How many matches are played during the tournament?

Martin in Wiltshire

A total of 675 matches are played across the 18 courts during Wimbledon fortnight.

That includes men's and women's singles, doubles and mixed doubles, boys and girls' junior events and the wheelchair tournaments.

Why do we no longer see the Chelsea Pensioners at Wimbledon?

Natalia

The Chelsea Pensioners may still attend Wimbledon but may not be in the spotlight as much.

They were last pictured in 2022.

The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC) says 16 tickets per day are allocated between the Lest We Forget and Not Forgotten Associations.

The members of both include Chelsea Pensioners, as well as service personnel involved in more recent conflicts.

The tickets given alternate between Centre Court and Court One for the first 12 days of the tournament.

How is it decided which commentators commentate on which matches?

Joanna in Wickham

The Ask Me Anything team put this question to Ron Chakraborty, head of events at BBC Sport.

"We have a brilliant group of commentators, starting with about 40 at the start of the tournament and then gradually reducing in number as the number of matches each day goes down.

"The key thing is trying to give commentators a bit of variety. When it comes to the biggest players and our key pundits, we try to make sure that if John McEnroe or Tim Henman commentated on Carlos Alcaraz in one round, they wouldn't commentate on him in the next. It gives them a chance to analyse different names and have a good idea of how they're playing as they hopefully reach the business end of the tournament.

"We have a group of commentators who mostly rotate around the biggest outside courts (courts 2, 3, 12 and 18) and we aim to rotate them around different players, different courts, and of course different partners - as lovely as they all are, you wouldn't want to spend four hours a day in a small box with the same person for a fortnight! We also try to make sure they have a match or two on Centre or Court One over the fortnight.

"There are also a number of other things we factor in - we often place British commentators on British players, Australians on Australians, Americans on Americans etc, as the commentary doubles up as Wimbledon's world feed which is taken in those countries so it adds an element of authenticity and often a higher level of personal insight.

"And every so often we'll have a nice individual connection. We put Louise Pleming on the mixed doubles final as it was Louise who introduced Sem Verbeek and Katerina Siniakova to each other earlier this year, so it was lovely for her to be calling the match when they won the Wimbledon title."

Why do the women's champions change so often while the men's don't?

Nicky in St Albans

In the past 10 years of Wimbledon, there have been only four different men's winners, while the women's tournament has had nine different champions.

Former world number five Daniela Hantuchova believes the spread of Grand Slam winners in women's tennis is due to the strength of the overall field.

"I feel like the field is much stronger across the top 100 - the physicality has moved to another level," said Hantuchova.

"It makes it so much more exciting on the women's tour because we have so many different stories. It makes our sport even more entertaining and more exciting to watch."

Former Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli says there is no standout player now, unlike when Serena Williams was dominant.

"The same as Steffi Graf, the same as Monica Seles or Billie-Jean King and Martina Navratilova and you can go down the list of all of the greats," she said.

"When you have the chance of playing in the era of someone like Serena, it was a chance because she helped us to try to take our game to another level.

"That dominance factor, the same as trying to beat Rafael Nadal at Roland Garros, it just makes the rest of the field have fewer chances to become a champion."

Why do BBC commentators continue to call the hill 'Henman Hill' when Tim Henman never won Wimbledon but Andy Murray did? At that time commentators called the hill Murray Mound.

David in West Yorkshire

This goes back to when the new Court One was opened in 1997, and with it the hill where spectators can watch from outside the court, Rob Chakraborty, head of major events at BBC Sport, tells us.

"That year, both Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski made the quarter-finals prompting the nicknames of 'Henman Hill' and 'Rusedski Ridge' whenever they were playing. Tim then went on to reach the semi-finals in four of the next five Championships, and the various epic matches he had during those runs established Henman Hill as the normal reference to that area.

"When Andy Murray rose to prominence a few years later, making the quarter-finals in 2008 and famously winning the title in 2013, the name 'Murray Mound' was used during his games, but at other times of the tournament we would return to Henman Hill.

"Further British players like Johanna Konta, Cam Norrie and Emma Raducanu have also had great success at Wimbledon, prompting attempts at nicknames for the hill (of varying quality) but again we usually default to Henman Hill.

"We also visit the club through the year for planning meetings and when we refer to operations taking place in that corner of the grounds, it's always referred to as Henman Hill mainly as it was the original name.

"Of course the good news is that Andy will have a statue on the grounds in 2027, so he will have his own special piece of real estate at Wimbledon for years to come."

This article is the latest from BBC Sport's Ask Me Anything team.

What is Ask Me Anything?

Ask Me Anything is a service dedicated to answering your questions.

We want to reward your time by telling you things you do not know and reminding you of things you do.

The team will find out everything you need to know and be able to call upon a network of contacts including our experts and pundits.

We will be answering your questions from the heart of the BBC Sport newsroom, and going behind the scenes at some of the world's biggest sporting events.

Our coverage will span the BBC Sport website, app, social media and YouTube accounts, plus BBC TV and radio.

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