WIMBLEDON -- Every day at Wimbledon hundreds of security staff search those coming through the gates for offensive items -- knives, bombs, paper hats...
Paper hats?
The apparently innocuous hats have joined the banned list, along with huge cardboard signs saying "Ace," for fear that cheeky companies are trying to get free television publicity at the championships.
Logo-smothered hats and the signs, designed to be held aloft after every ace a player serves, are handed out free to the thousands of fans who queue for hours every morning to get into the All England Club.
But the freebies are taken from them by eagle-eyed security staff at the gates.
"Essentially it is ambush marketing," a Wimbledon spokesman said on Friday. "The companies hope their names will come within camera range."
Official sponsors, from soft drink makers to hygiene products, pay millions of dollars to have their names associated with the championships and guard their privileges jealously.
