June 18, 2010

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Players are preparing for the 2010 Wimbledon Championships, the largest grass court event of the year and the oldest tournament in tennis, which begins on Monday. The official draws have been announced and, with some controversy, Roger Federer has been recognized as the No.1 seeded player even though he has dropped to the No. 2 spot on the ATP World Tour rankings behind Rafael Nadal.

A total of 19 out of the Top 20 players will be participating in this year's event, with world No. 8 Juan Martin Del Potro still out with injury. Federer may be the No. 1 seed at Wimbledon, but he faces a very tough tournament ahead of him as the draw is top heavy with players like Novak Djokovic, Nikolay Davydenko, Andy Roddick and Marin Cilic.

The 2009 Australian Open was the last Grand Slam where Federer and Nadal battled it out and Nadal emerged as the champion. Their most recent meeting was at the 2010 Masters 1000 event in Madrid, a clay court tournament, which Nadal also won. It would make for an interesting Wimbledon final if the world No. 1 and No. 2 player were to meet again. Federer is the favourite to win as he is a six-time Wimbledon champion, but Nadal was also victorious the last time these two met at the All-England Club which was in the 2008 final, widely considered one of the best tennis matches of all-time.

In the women's draw, Serena and Venus Williams have claimed the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds respectively, while Belgian Kim Clijsters makes another Grand Slam appearance as the No. 8 seeded player. Elena Dementieva will not be competing at Wimbledon this year as she is out with a calf injury that had bothered her throughout the French Open. However, there is no lack of Russian women in this event as a third of the seeded players are Russian. Maria Sharapova has put a lot of preparation into this event as she would like to claim the title for the second time in her career after beating Serena Williams in the 2004 final.