WITH top seed Ash Barty and defending champion Simona Halep both heading into Wimbledon without a single match on grass this season after recent injury concerns, the women’s field is wide open.
The French Open this month crowned a first-time women’s major winner for the sixth straight year and it could well be Wimbledon’s turn to witness a new Grand Slam champion on July 10 for the first time since France’s Marion Bartoli lifted the Venus Rosewater Dish in 2013.
Top-ranked Barty, who picks grass as her favorite surface despite winning her maiden major on Parisian clay in 2019, retired from her last two tournaments but more worryingly for the Australian those were due to different physical ailments.
The 25-year-old’s Roland Garros campaign was curtailed in the second round when she had to retire due to a hip injury she suffered in training while a muscle strain in her serving arm forced her to quit during the quarterfinal in Rome.
Halep was denied a chance to defend her 2019 title when Wimbledon was cancelled last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a pall of injury worry will hang over the second-seeded Romanian when she starts her campaign next week.
Like Barty, Halep also exited the WTA 1000 event in Rome midway after suffering a calf injury during her second-round outing against Angelique Kerber and was subsequently forced to miss the French Open.
