It was never 'forced' upon anyone. No-one complained about having to do it, and it actually added something to Wimbledon whose uniqueness is in its sense of history and tradition, along with its royal patronage. The Duke of Kent decided to unilaterally end one of those traditions, despite there having been no sense that it was a problem for anyone. His presidency of the All England Club has been more or less a complete non-entity otherwise. We're still no closer to having even a small proportion of children playing tennis regularly, which means that Andy Murray aside, we have no world class tennis players in this country. All this while the formerly Eastern Bloc countries, for example, have been churning out world class players on a conveyor belt.
Kate took a couple of shots with a hockey stick and sales of hockey equipment soared 300%. That's what tennis in this country needs, a public figure whose support makes things happen, rather than simply sitting almost anonymously in the Royal Box.
You state that Kate 'probably plays up' the amount of attention she receives. What is the evidence for this statement? When has she 'played up' to the press, or tried to insert herself above her appropriate station among the royals? We've only ever seen her be extremely careful when among other royals to not step on anyone's toes.
You may not be interested in watching Andy Murray tomorrow, but I'm pretty confident in saying that you're in the minority in that. His semi-final managed to pre-empt the 6 O'Clock News on BBC1, who actually switched the evening's main news bulletin to BBC2. I have never seen that happen. The news on all the channels last night dedicated at least the first 10 minutes of their 30 minute bulletins to the story, despite the fact that, among other things, we've seen some of the worst summer flooding ever. I have no doubt whatsoever that viewing figures for the final tomorrow will be enormous in the UK.