Wimbledon At Glance

The oldest tennis tournament in the world: The Wimbledon is widely considered to be the most prestigious and the premier tennis tournament in the world. Since 1877, the All England Club has been holding Lawn Tennis Championship at Wimbledon. It is one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments – the other three Majors are the Australian Open, French Open and US Open – and the only one still played on the game’s original surface, grass, which gave the game of lawn tennis its name. Wimbledon is a district in the south west area of London, England, located south of Wandsworth, and east of Kingston upon Thames on the outskirts of Greater London. It is home to the Wimbledon Tennis Championships.

Let’s take a look at players of this year Wimbledon:

Serena and Venus Williams are looking over Wimbledon to maintain their decade of dominance as the most famous sister act in sport at the All England club. At least one Williams sister has appeared in 10 of the last 11 women’s singles finals stretching back to 2000, when Venus downed Lindsay Davenport in straight sets to claim her maiden Grand Slam triumph.

Much interest will centre on the campaign of China’s Li Na, the newly crowned French Open champion who has reached the final of both grand slam tournaments so far this season. She is determined to prove that her performance in Paris was no flash in the pan. With world No 2 Kim Clijsters withdrawing through injury, a potential dark horse is fifth seed Maria Sharapova, the only woman to record a victory over one of the Williams sisters in a Wimbledon final.

Defending champion Rafael Nadal is hovering to end Roger Federer’s dream of a seventh Wimbledon title and ready to forge ahead in the race to be crowned the greatest player of all time.

World No. 1 Nadal took his Grand Slam title tally to 10 with a sixth French Open win two weeks ago – his fourth final win in Paris over Federer – and is now only six majors behind the great Swiss. The Spaniard will be chasing his third Wimbledon trophy, a feat which could sink for good Federer’s hopes of a seventh title to match the record of Pete Sampras. But Nadal, the 2008 and 2010 Wimbledon champion and runner-up in 2006 and 2007, is not prepared to write off his great rival, who he has faced 25 times, just yet.

Federer, now without a Grand Slam title since his 16th major at the 2010 Australian Open, was stunned by the Czech Republic’s Tomas Berdych in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon last year. It was his earliest exit at the All England Club since his first round loss to Mario Ancic in 2002. But he has been buoyed by his run to the French Open final, ending Novak Djokovic’s 43-match winning streak in the semifinals.

Djokovic, the Australian Open winner who is poised to depose Nadal as world No. 1, has yet to make a Wimbledon final, losing in the 2010 semifinal to Berdych in straight sets and to Nadal, also in the last four, in 2007. But the world No 2 Serb, who skipped the traditional Wimbledon warm-up at Queen’s Club because of tendinitis, has been tipped to finally succeed at the All England Club by Andre Agassi.

World No. 4 Andy Murray, bidding to become Britain’s first Wimbledon men’s champion since Fred Perry 75 years ago, made the semifinals in 2009 and 2010. Andy Roddick will be a sentimental favourite to do well at Wimbledon having been runner-up to Federer in 2004, 2005 and 2009.

Tags: Grand Slam, Grass, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Tennis, Wimbledon, Wimbledon Championships, Wimbledon Tennis Championships