It could be a strange Wimbledon on the women’s side — then again, given recent history, it would be par for the course.
A sudden rupture appears to have taken place at the top of the women’s game.
From January through April, Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina dominated the tour. Rybakina won the Australian Open, Sabalenka completed the Indian Wells-Miami double, and both looked strong early in the clay season.
But the tone shifted in Paris, where both suffered difficult and unexpected losses.
As both perennial powerhouses have continued to struggle on grass over the past few weeks, it has become easier to imagine a Wimbledon draw without a dominant favorite.
A quick canvas of the Top 10 reveals a field in flux.
Aryna Sabalenka has suffered third-set bagels in two of her last four matches — a worrying trend.
Elena Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion, lost two of her three grass-court tune-up matches. Coco Gauff also appears out of sorts. After a third-round loss in her Roland Garros title defense, the two-time major champion fell to Paula Badosa in her only grass-court match of the summer in Berlin.
Defending Wimbledon champion Iga Swiatek heads to SW19 without a single grass-court win this season. She lost her only match on the surface just days ago.
Off to Wimbledon and, like many others, hoping for a swift change of fortune.
The usual suspects suddenly look anything but.
World No.5 Mirra Andreeva is fresh off her maiden major title in Paris, but she also lost her only grass-court match, falling in straight sets to Ekaterina Alexandrova in Bad Homburg.
Wimbledon has always been one of those tournaments where recent results should be taken with a grain of salt. The grass season is so short that it’s difficult to draw firm conclusions. Unlike the clay season, where players have more than two months to build form and fine-tune their games on the road to Roland Garros, grass offers little time for certainty.
Three weeks on grass is a blur. Blink and you miss it. So who arrives in form?
Jessica Pegula and newly minted Top 10 member Linda Noskova certainly do. They contested Sunday’s Berlin final, and both possess games that are tailor-made for grass.
Donna Vekic, always dangerous, claimed the Queen’s Club title a few weeks ago. She arrives at Wimbledon, where first-time women’s champions have become almost an annual tradition, as the No.31 seed.
The Championships have produced eight consecutive first-time women’s singles champions since Serena Williams successfully defended her title in 2016. Could Serena be the one who flips the trend?
There will be plenty of dangerous floaters in the draw, starting with seven-time champion Williams, who will begin her singles comeback with the eyes of the tennis world upon her. Jelena Ostapenko, Barbora Krejcikova, Nikola Bartunkova, Katie Boulter, Maja Chwalinska and Karolina Pliskova are all unseeded, looming and dangerous.
Buckle in for Wimbledon 2026. At a tournament that has become synonymous with surprises and chaos on the women’s side, perhaps the only thing we can count on is more of the same.