Wimbledon will also host the Olympics tennis this year, and players are excited about the prospect
It is an Olympic year but also a year with two opportunities to win a prize that glitters at the All England Club, which is making for unusual behavior at the year’s first Grand Slam tennis tournament.
Serena Williams is singing the praises of Fed Cup. Established doubles teams like Rohan Bopanna of India and Aisam-ul-haq Qureshi of Pakistan have split in favor of same-nation partnerships at the Australian Open. Leading men’s singles players like Andy Roddick are checking the entry deadline for – of all things – mixed doubles with an eye on preparing for the Olympic event that Roddick hopes to play with Williams.
“Serena and I have been friends for a really long time, and frankly she’s my best chance at a gold medal, so if I need to play here, I need to play here,” Roddick said before hobbling out of the Australian Open due to an injury.
Mixed doubles will be a novelty at the London Games, where it will make its return to the Olympic programme for the first time since 1924. But the bigger attraction lies in playing the Olympic tournament on the grass of the All England Club, site of Wimbledon, the oldest and still most celebrated of the Grand Slam tournaments. Wimbledon will end this year July 8, just 20 days before the Olympic tournament is to begin.
“I am really energised and looking forward to it,” Roger Federer said of the two tournaments at Wimbledon.
Federer has won Wimbledon six times, thriving on a surface that rewards shot-making, all-court skills and improvisation. Yet he has never won the Olympic singles title, failing on outdoor hard courts in Sydney in 2000, Athens in 2004 and Beijing in 2008. (He won the men’s doubles gold medal with compatriot Stan Wawrinka in 2008.)
The Olympic singles gold medal is the only major individual tennis trophy that Federer lacks, and his chances will not be hurt by the reality that few players feel truly at home on grass. In contrast to 2004 and 2008, he will not be required to switch surfaces or continents to play in the Games after Wimbledon.
“The last times have been brutal,” he said.
But Federer, who was beaten in the Wimbledon quarterfinals the past two years, is hardly the only top player feeling energized by the possibilities. Rafael Nadal has won Wimbledon twice, has won the Olympic singles gold and would surely appreciate the opportunity to cut down on the midsummer pounding on his body by playing more grass-court tennis.
“It’s the best tennis club of the world, so to have the chance to enjoy it as usual and then at the Olympics will be something completely different, amazing,” he told Britain’s Olympic rower emeritus Steven Redgrave in an interview published this week in The Daily Telegraph. “Confidence is the most important thing in this sport, and the confidence from winning Wimbledon would make it easier to win the Olympics, too. Either would be very difficult, both even more – but the player who wins Wimbledon will be the favourite for the Olympics. It can happen.”
Other favourites are expected to be Andy Murray, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Novak Djokovic, who beat Nadal to win Wimbledon last year and has made a habit of soaring under the pressure of playing for Serbia. He was part of the team that won the Davis Cup in 2010 and won the bronze medal in singles in 2008 in Beijing.
“It was a remarkable experience, like no other,” Djokovic said of the 2008 Games. “Tennis is just one of so many sports that is present in the Olympic Games, which is the most prestigious, the most valuable, the most well-known sporting event in the history of sport. That says enough.”
The women’s field at the Games is tougher to parse. While Petra Kvitova, the 2011 Wimbledon champion, will be among the favourites, it is still unclear whether Williams will be deemed eligible or whether her sister Venus will qualify. They have been the dominant women at Wimbledon for more than a decade, with Serena winning four singles titles, Venus winning five and the two of them combining for four women’s doubles titles. They also won gold together at the Olympics in 2000 and 2008.
It is difficult to imagine an Olympics on London grass without them. But International Tennis Federation rules stipulate that players must have participated in or made themselves available to play Fed Cup in two separate years during the Olympic cycle.
Serena Williams has yet to play in Fed Cup since the last Games in 2008 but had major health problems last year, including a pulmonary embolism. She plans to play Fed Cup for the United States next month and has also committed to the next round in April.
“I definitely can’t wait for Fed Cup,” Williams said.
But even if she does stay healthy enough to play and the US Tennis Association recommends her inclusion, she will still not satisfy the criteria for automatic approval from the ITF and will need its Olympic committee to approve her participation.
As for Venus Williams, the issue could come down to how far she can lift her ranking if she does indeed return to competition this year. She is No 101 in singles, having played little because of an autoimmune disorder.
The ranking cutoff for automatic entry into the women’s singles field, which will come June 11, the day after the French Open, is projected to be close to 70. But each nation is restricted at the Olympics to a maximum of four women’s singles players and a maximum of six women’s players overall.
If Venus Williams is not one of the top four Americans and the other four are inside the ranking cutoff, she could be left out, with a strong doubles team, Liezel Huber and Lisa Raymond, set to take the other two slots.
There is also the case of Marion Bartoli of France, who reached the 2007 Wimbledon final and the semifinals last year but has not played Fed Cup since 2004 because officials have declined to accede to her demand that her father and coach, Walter, be allowed to work with her during that competition. It appears unlikely that Bartoli will play in the Olympics, although there is still a chance that she could appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport or seek an ITF wild card.
The 20-day gap between Wimbledon and the Olympic tournament is going to put considerable pressure on the All England Club’s grounds staff, led by Eddie Seaward, the veteran groundskeeper who plans to retire after the double.
But Seaward and his team have had ample preparation. They had to whip the grass courts quickly back into shape in 2003 when the movie “Wimbledon” was shot on site, mainly after the championships. In 2010 and 2011, Seaward and his team prepared for the Olympics by using pre-germinated grass seeds to quickly fill in the bare patches that appear largely on the baselines.
“It has passed the test,” said Nick Imison, a spokesman for the International Tennis Federation.
“If you have a wet Wimbledon, it will make it tougher.”