If there are any young players who hope to take the spotlight at this year’s Wimbledon Championships, Serena Williams is having them hold her racquet.
The 23-time Grand Slam winner is making her return to the grass-court Slam on Monday, her third tournament since coming out of retirement at the Queen’s Club Championships earlier this month.
Williams’ comeback came during a newsy stretch in professional tennis. Her doubles partner at Queen’s Club, Canadian Victoria Mboko, suffered an MCL injury during her singles match, forcing the pair to withdraw, and Mboko to miss Wimbledon. Meanwhile, 2023 Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova was suspended four years for refusing an anti-doping test, a controversial punishment for a Major winner.
It’s yet another Grand Slam where stars like Mboko, and on the men’s side, Carlos Alcaraz are absent. Still, the tournament projects to be filled with thrilling singles matches as early as Round 1 (see Taylor Fritz vs. Jack Draper).
Here are four storylines to follow ahead of the world’s most famous tennis tournament. Get your strawberries and cream ready.
Serena’s double comeback
Williams has played two doubles matches since making her return: a first-round win with Mboko, and a loss with Czechia’s Karolina Muchova in Berlin. Williams and Muchova fell in straight sets, but the 44-year-old looked agile and strong as she did in 2022 — her last year on tour.
Williams’ doubles partner this tournament is particularly familiar, being her sister Venus. The Williams sisters won 14 Grand Slams together, including six at Wimbledon, most recently in 2016. On the 10-year anniversary of that championship, Serena and Venus, 44- and 46-years-old respectively, look to make more tennis history.
Serena saved her singles comeback for Wimbledon, and it’s tricky to evaluate how she will fare based on the doubles results. Williams is set to take on 20-year-old Maya Joint, who has not made it past the first round at Wimbledon in her young career.
For all Joint lacks in experience, her counterpart lacks in recent reps.
If Williams can get past Joint, her expected Round 2 opponent is 21-year-old Alexandra Eala, who has four wins against top-10 players this season, including two at last week’s grass-court Berlin Open.
After Eala would likely come No. 3 Iga Swiatek, who was last year’s champion. Even for Williams’ greatness, a fourth-round appearance would be astounding.
Doubles is a different ballgame. Well, same ball, different outlook.
The WIlliams sisters have a staggering 45-5 all-time doubles record at the All England Club. The older Williams won five of her seven singles Majors at the tournament.
Despite their combined ages, and Serena’s un-retirement, they are the most dominant doubles pairing in tennis history, which is a less strenuous game than singles. If their bodies hold up, there is no telling how far the Williams can go.
Highest seeded-Canadian man
Montreal’s Felix Auger-Aliassime has tied a Canadian tennis record.
Going into Wimbledon as the No. 3 seed in men’s singles, The 25-year-old has matched Milos Raonic (Australian Open, 2017) as the highest-seeded Canadian singles player at a Grand Slam.
Auger-Aliassime was the 4-seed at last month’s Roland Garros, but jumped Novak Djokovic in the points race following the Serbian’s third-round exit in Paris.
The Canadian star is coming into London with a fresh haircut, as one of the best players on tour. And yet, his confidence is a question-mark.
Following his quarterfinal collapse vs. Flavio Cobboli at Roland Garros, where he won the first set before dropping three straight, Auger-Aliassime seemed entirely disenchanted by tennis.
“I’m destroyed today,” he said during the post-match press conference. “I feel like I’m not the player I want to be.”
While Auger-Aliassime has been a top-level player since the dawn of the decade, he is becoming known for squandering opportunities. The Cobboli match essentially became a free trip to the French Open final, as semifinalist Mateo Arnaldi withdrew in a walkover. Cobboli lost the final to Alexander Zverev.
For Auger-Aliassime, who has played at least one quarterfinal at all four Grand Slams without ever making it beyond, there is a wall he has been struggling to get past.
Auger-Aliassime’s projected matchup for this quarterfinal is none other than the 24-time champion Djokovic. The two have not met since 2022, and have beaten each other once.
Beyond Djokovic is reigning champion Jannik Sinner, who could be Auger-Aliassime’s semifinal opponent. Sinner leads that head-to-head 5-2.
For the Canadian, reaching the semifinal would be a tremendous accomplishment. He has won only one match at the last four Wimbledon Championships, so he is due to make a run.
Much like Paris when it hosted Roland Garros, London will be sweltering for these Wimbledon Championships, with temperatures expected to reach 30 degrees by next weekend.
This bodes poorly for one particular Italian.
Sinner performs poorly in extreme heat, and is prone to cramping. His stunning second-round loss in France came on a day where temperatures were in the mid-30s. He dropped 15 of the last 17 games, falling to unseeded Juan Manuel Cerundolo, and seemed to have trouble standing by the end.
Heat cramps have been a recurring issue for the No. 1 player in the world. Sinner ran into the same issue in Australia, falling behind against unseeded Eliot Spizzirri, before the Rod Laver Arena roof was closed in accordance with the tournament’s extreme heat policy.
For Sinner, and other players whose bodies are especially affected by extreme temperatures, there is some grace. New heat rules ensure that players have an extended break between the second and third sets to rest and recharge.
Additionally Wimbledon’s two largest courts feature retractable roofs, but they are almost exclusively used against precipitation and are not necessarily retracted for extreme temperatures.
A familiar face for Canadian tennis fans is making her return to the Major stage.
Mississauga, Ont.’s, Bianca Andreescu qualified for the tournament this week and is set to play the Main Draw at Wimbledon for the first time since 2024. She has not qualified for any Grand Slam since the ‘24 US Open.
Andreescu’s 2019 US Open victory was a flagship moment in Canadian tennis. She is the only Canadian to win a singles Grand Slam title.
Andreescu’s road back to the Grand Slam stage has been bumpy and imperfect. She has not vied for a singles title since 2019, and has been ranked as low as No. 234 in that time.
It is not uncommon for tennis players to fall off after having early success, often due to injuries or personal issues. Fellow Canadian Eugenie Bouchard was a finalist at Wimbledon in 2014, and never won a singles title following that tournament, retiring last year at age 31.
Both Andreescu and Bouchard have been sturdy ambassadors for tennis nationally, even when results have been disappointing.
Andreescu has the chance to remind the world why she is a Major champion. Ankle injuries have hampered her once elite mobility, but Andreescu can thump a tennis ball with the best of them, and has a vast array of shots in her arsenal.
The Canadian takes on 37-year-old veteran Zhang Shuai in the first round, who was a quarter-finalist at the tournament in 2019.