Mumbai: For eight consecutive years, Wimbledon has had a first-time women’s singles champion. Few would bet against that standout streak also rolling into the 2026 edition.
Not just because the modern women’s game does not feature players who feel comfortable on grass, or possess a playing style that could adapt to its vagaries. But also because a majority of the top players have had a poor build-up to the Grand Slam starting on Monday.
And so, three weeks after the clay-court Slam that turned a graveyard for the contenders and crowned a fresh champion in Mirra Andreeva, the grass-court Slam could be anybody’s game again.
No clear favourite, lots of intrigue.
The short turnaround between the French Open and Wimbledon doesn’t allow players too much time to find their groove on a surface that is the least common in the calendar. Early exits in tune-in grass-court tournaments can only add to the complexity.
And early exits have been the theme this month across most top names – from defending champion Iga Swiatek, to world No.1 Aryna Sabalenka, to world No.2 and 2022 champion Elena Rybakina, to Andreeva.
Let’s start with the holder, who returned to the All England Club on Friday wearing a huge smile seeing her photo on its walls and name on the board again.
“All these memories from last year are building up,” Swiatek said in a video released by Wimbledon.
Those moments might seem a long way back. The world No.3 was knocked out in the first round of the Bad Homburg Open, a WTA 500 event on grass, by American Emma Navarro on Wednesday. To go with the four-time French Open champion’s more shocking fourth-round ouster in Paris this year, Swiatek is hardly carrying the champion’s aura.
Grass is her least productive surface, and her Wimbledon run last year – she beat Amanda Anisimova 6-0, 6-0 in the final – came rather unexpectedly amid a fruitless Slam streak since her last Roland Garros title in 2024.
There may not be great expectations around Swiatek. Sabalenka, meanwhile, has been through epic meltdowns.
Since the WTA rankings were published in 1975, Sabalenka is the first world No.1 to get bagelled in deciding sets at consecutive WTA level events, as per OptaAce. The most recent came a week ago on grass in Berlin where Jessica Pegula handed her a 6-0 third-set drubbing in the semi-final.
That came after an even more inexplicable 6-0 third-set collapse against 25th seed Diana Shnaider in the French Open quarter-final. Sabalenka was playing like a million bucks in the previous four rounds and even in that match. Until, leading 6-3, 5-3, she suddenly couldn’t buy a game.
The Belarusian said she has started working with her psychologist again, after having pressed pause on the need to have one.
“I don’t want to stay too much in those sets, in those numbers. Overall, I feel like things are clicking back together,” Sabalenka said on Saturday. “Now I’m here, I’m happy, and I can’t wait to start playing.”
Her top ranking is also at stake this Wimbledon. Should Sabalenka, a three-time semi-finalist in London, go out early and Rybakina go deep, the order could flip. Rybakina, though, is short on form herself. One of the few players with the weapons to succeed on grass, the world No.2 lost to Katie Boulter in the Queen’s quarter-finals and Alexandra Eala in the Berlin Round of 16 coming into Wimbledon.
Andreeva, 19, had a defining couple of weeks in Paris. The teen hit a roadblock in her reset as she crashed out in the first round of Bad Homburg, losing to Ekaterina Alexandrova. The Russian has only gone as far as the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, and is still a work in progress on grass.
Doing a French Open-Wimbledon double in the same season is rare. The last woman to do so, in 2015, was also the last to defend her Wimbledon crown, in 2016.
And oh, she’s going to be around in 2026 too.
Serena Williams will be back playing singles after four years. The 44-year-old takes on Australia’s 20-year-old Maya Joint in the first round. Should the American legend win a couple of matches, a contest with Swiatek could be in store.
Even by Serena’s great past standards, that will take some doing. At this Wimbledon, though, count nothing out.