The names engraved on the honour’s board after the 2010 Australian Open may be familiar but the eventual winners aside, the year’s first Grand Slam suggested a changing of the guard may soon be upon us.
UPDATE! The Australian Open fourth round is upon us and there are a host a mouth-watering match-ups.
What will 2010 bring to the sport of tennis? That is the question that has been rallying inside the minds of writers and fans at the start of another season.
Heavy snow fell at Wimbledon on 6 January 2010. Here are some photographs taken around the grounds at the All England Club.
It’s not only the end of the year, it’s the end of the decade. So here’s our collection of where Wimbledon is featuring in some of the round-ups of 2009 and the noughties.
The tennis season is officially over for another year, work on Wimbledon 2010 will continue over Christmas and throughout winter, but what do your favourite tennis players do with their well-earned time off?
Another tennis season has drawn to a close, so have a look at the report cards for the leading men’s and women’s players and tell us who you think was the ‘player of the year’.
There is only one major tournament remaining in the 2009 tennis calendar, and it begins in London on November 22 and is supported by Wimbledon. The Barclays ATP World Tour finals at the O2 Arena will bring together the best-eight performing male singles players and doubles pairings.
Wimbledon is proud to be associated with the 2009 Barclays ATP World Tour Finals that begin at the O2 Arena, London, on November 22. So here is the head-to-head record of the world’s top-eight players of 2009 who will be contesting the year’s final event.
John Newcombe
Who had the best moustache at Wimbledon?
We ask this question because it’s Movemeber - the month formerly known as November. Movember is described on its website as “a moustache growing charity event held during November each year that raises funds and awareness for men’s health”. Essentially, you grow a moustache and people sponsor you to keep it on your face for a month.
1. When Wimbledon was bombed.
This was in the official announcements section of the 1946 programme for The Championships:
“On the night of Friday, 11th October, 1940, a ‘stick’ of five 500-pound bombs straddled the club grounds. The first bomb demolished the club tool house. The second bomb of the ‘stick’ fell on the roof of Centre Court. The third bomb fell in Church Road at the club N.E. entrance and the last two produced two bunkers in the Wimbledon Park Golf Club. The damage to the Centre Court means a loss of 1,200 seats.
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New tickets have been released for the end-of-season Barclays ATP World Tour Finals at the O2 Arena from November 21. These lower bowl tickets were held off sale for production purposes and are likely to be be snapped up quickly. Click on the link below to purchase the tickets:
“So is Federer a future Wimbledon champion? Probably not unless he learns to vary his tactics. He has been brought up on clay and it showed, his trips to the net being about as frequent as a blue moon. Still if he only becomes the next Ivan Lendl (eight Grand Slams) he will be thanking his lucky stars.” That was Guy Hodgson writing in the Independent after Roger Federer had won the Wimbledon boy’s title in 1998.
The Chris Evert-Martina Navratilova rivalry spanned 80 professional matches from 1973 till 1988, including nine meetings at Wimbledon, the most matches between any two players at The Championships following the abolition of the Challenger round.
There are not many serial grand slam winners who never won Wimbledon: Monica Seles (nine Grand Slams), Ken Rosewall (eight), Ivan Lendl (eight), Mats Wilander (seven) and Justine Henin (seven).
Now Henin is making a comeback with the express purpose of removing herself from this list. “It is a dream of mine,” Henin said of winning Wimbledon in the second chapter of her career. “I want to work to get it. I make it a priority.”
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The Wimbledon blog spoke to former British number one and Wimbledon semi-finalist Tim Henman and the first and the last things he did at Wimbledon. Read More
When top seed Rafael Nadal withdrew from Wimbledon earlier this year, the fifth seed Juan Martin Del Potro took his place at line one of the draw. He didn’t last long, losing in the second round to the unseeded Lleyton Hewitt. It was the first shock of The Championships and after the match, Hewitt, the 2002 champion, was full of the praise for the 20-year-old. “He’s a future Grand Slam champion on possibly any surface,” Hewitt said of the youngest player in the world top 10.
Walk into the All England Club offices and the first picture you see hanging on the wall is from this year’s Centre Court Celebration where Kim Clijsters is standing at the net watching her doubles partner Tim Henman play a forehand volley against Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf. In the 119 days since that photo was taken, Clijsters made a return to professional tennis and became the first mother to win a Grand Slam since Evonne Goolagong at Wimbledon in 1980.
There are many hats that Roger Federer wears, or should that be crowns. With six Wimbledon titles to his name he has been called the ‘King of Wimbledon’, as in when the BBC’s Sue Barker made this torturous link during this year’s Championships: “[he] has become known in recent years as the King of Wimbledon … and this is the day after the death of the King of Pop”. But with five consecutive titles to his name at the US Open, and two wins away from a sixth, Federer has claims on the title ‘King of New York’.
In her first Grand Slam tournament since returning from retirement, Kim Clijsters has beaten third seed Venus Williams and moved into the quarter-finals of the US Open.
It was the All England Club’s invitation to Clijsters to play two exhibition matches to test the new Centre Court roof that inspired her comeback, and should Clijsters win the US Open, she will become the first mother to lift a Grand Slam singles trophy since Evonne Goolagong won Wimbledon in 1980.
