As if the tension levels were not high enough on the morning of the draw, the nerves were stretched to snapping point as news broke of Simona Halep’s withdrawal.
Just moments before the fates of the great and the good were about to be decided, the 2019 Ladies’ Singles Champion announced that she had not recovered from a calf injury and so she would be unable to defend her title. Cue a communal gasp around the Grounds of the All England Club: if everyone thought it was going to be an open draw this summer, it had now been torn to shreds.
Halep is the world No.3 but, due to the earlier withdrawal of Naomi Osaka, the No.2, the Romanian was the No.2 seed here. That would have bookended the draw sheet nicely: the 2019 Roland-Garros champion Ashleigh Barty at the top and the 2019 Wimbledon champion at the bottom. But Halep’s torn calf muscle had stubbornly refused to heal and so Aryna Sabalenka was now promoted to the position of No.2 seed.
The strength in depth of the ladies’ draw, added to the unique playing conditions of grass, makes finding an out-and-out favourite for this year’s title more than a little tricky. Yes, Barty is the top seed and, yes, she is a Grand Slam champion. But her best result in SW19 is reaching the fourth round two years ago. And she, too, has had her injury problems – she had to pull out of Roland-Garros with a hip issue.
To make headway this year, she has – according to the seedings and on paper – to plot her path around Carla Suarez Navarro in the first round, either Anna Blinkova or Timea Babos after that, Johanna Konta, the No.27 seed, in the third round and maybe Barbora Krejcikova, the Roland-Garros champion in the fourth. With the possibility of facing Bianca Andreescu in the quarter-finals and either Serena Williams or Elina Svitolina in the semi-finals, Barty has a long and complicated journey ahead of her.
So, where to look for possible champions? Past champions would be a good starting point and the most successful of those is, of course, the mighty Serena. Still chasing that 24th Grand Slam title to equal Margaret Court’s record, her task looks anything but straightforward.
She begins her campaign against Aliaksandra Sasnovich, the world No.100 from Belarus who reached the fourth round here three years ago. If that goes well for Williams, she will have to manoeuvre her way past either Bernarda Pera (who took her to three sets last summer in Lexington) or Nao Hibino before facing, in all likelihood, Angelique Kerber, the No.25 seed and 2018 champion. And if you remember, Kerber beat one S Williams in that final.
But assuming all goes well for the seven-time champion, Williams will have to beat – and again, this is only according to the seedings – either Belinda Bencic or Coco Gauff in the fourth round and either Elina Svitolina or Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the quarter-finals to set up that appointment with Barty in the semi-finals.
Petra Kvitova certainly knows what it takes to win in SW19 but the champion of 2011 and 2014 has the toughest of tests just to get her challenge started: she faces Sloane Stephens, the 2017 US Open champion and a quarter-finalist here in 2013. After that she might find herself facing Heather Watson as she tries to steer a path towards Karolina Pliskova in the fourth round and Sofia Kenin, last year’s champion at the Australian Open and finalist at Roland-Garros, in the quarter-finals.
If she gets through that gaggle of champions, she could well find herself having to take on either Sabalenka or Iga Swiatek, last year’s Roland-Garros winner, in the semi-finals.
Garbiñe Muguruza won the title in 2017 but in her next two visits to the All England Club, she only won one match. Even so, if she were to rediscover that form of four years ago, she could meet the No.21 seed, Ons Jabeur, in the third round (Muguruza is seeded No.11), and Swiatek, the No.7 seed, in the fourth. That might put her through to a quarter-final meeting with Sabalenka. Except that Sabalenka has only won one match at Wimbledon. That was in 2017. When Muguruza was winning the title.
So, then, pick the bones out of that little lot.
The best course of action is to make a cup of tea and stock up on a fortnight’s worth of chocolate biscuits. The two weeks of Wimbledon seldom goes according to the form book because tennis around these parts is played on grass, not paper. It should be a cracking Fortnight.
