The pool of great female tennis players is deeper than ever

JUST A HANDFUL of women have dominated Wimbledon in the past four decades. Serena Williams and Steffi Graf each won the tournament seven times; Martina Navratilova claimed the title nine times. But as Ms Williams approaches her 40th birthday, nobody else appears able to dominate the game in the same way. Five other women have prevailed at the All England Lawn Tennis Club since 2013, none of them twice. The field at this year’s event, which begins on June 28th, is deeper than ever.

Fourteen of the female athletes in this year’s 128-player draw have won titles at one of the four grand-slam tournaments (the French Open, the US Open, the Australian Open and Wimbledon, which are also known as “majors”). As recently as 2017 the field included only eight former grand-slam champions. In 1996 only five participants had a major title to their name. Most strikingly, 56 women in the field this year have reached the final eight at a major tournament at least once before. Since 1980 the average Wimbledon field has contained only 37 such competitors.

Even that long list of former grand-slam quarter-finalists does not contain the full range of possible champions. Aryna Sabalenka, a hard-hitting 23-year-old, has ascended to fourth place in the rankings despite never reaching the fourth round at a major tournament. Recent warm-up events in Birmingham and Berlin delivered a pair of first-time titlists, Ons Jabeur and Liudmila Samsonova. Ms Jabeur had reached the final eight at the Australian Open in 2020, but Ms Samsonova was a virtual unknown. She beat four former grand slam semi-finalists in Berlin though she has never won more than a single match in the biggest competitions.

In short, Wimbledon could be anybody’s to win. The current title-holder, Simona Halep, who won in 2019 (Wimbledon was cancelled in 2020 because of covid-19), has withdrawn from the tournament due to a calf injury. The world number two, Naomi Osaka, the reigning champion at both the US and Australian opens, is sitting out the event owing to mental-health concerns. Ashleigh Barty, ranked number one, has an attacking game built for grass but has never gone past the round of 16 at Wimbledon. Many of the young players who have emerged in the last two years, such as Iga Swiatek, the French Open champion in 2020, have almost no experience on grass courts.

Ms Barty or Ms Osaka may yet emerge as a new perennial victor, but the more likely outcome is the variety on view today. Leading players now come from more countries than in the past. Ms Jabeur, of Tunisia, was the first woman from an Arab country to win a title. At the French Open in 2020 Nadia Podoroska of Argentina became the first player from South America to reach a major semi-final in 16 years.

Some fans look back fondly on the era when Ms Graf and a few rivals plowed through the first week, setting up familiar final-round showdowns. The game today does not pack the same star-power punch, but the quality of play is far better, the pool of players more diverse and the results more unpredictable than ever before.