Wimbledon Tennis Tips, Analysis & Preview 2023 | Our Predictions for the Ladies’ Singles Tournament

French Open and US Open champion Iga Swiatek, Australian Open champion Aryna Sabalenka, and defending Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina are all vying for favouritism ahead of Wimbledon 2023.

Will one of this big three, who have also dominated the major WTA finals in 2023, also take the Venus Rosewater Dish on Saturday 15th July? There is plenty of competition in the rest of the draw to analyse.

Petra Kvitova has won a grass court warm-up event in Berlin and is one of only two players not named Swiatek, Rybakina or Sabalenka to win a big title this year, as the veteran Czech triumphed in Miami. The other player to win a big title was Barbora Krejcikova and she arrives here back in the top ten seeds for the first time since 2019 as well.

In terms of other storylines, the only other former Wimbledon champion in the field, other than Rybakina and Kvitova, is 43-year-old Venus Williams. The All-England Club gave Williams a wild card but Williams showed that it wasn’t just a sympathy WC as she ousted Camila Giorgi in over three hours in Birmingham last week and then pushed eventual champion Jelena Ostapenko to three sets as well. Former SW19 semi-finalist Elina Svitolina is Venus’ opponent in the opening round in a match surely destined for Centre Court.

There is a fairly strong representation of British players in the draw, obviously helped by wildcards, but most will like their chances of a run here. Katie Boulter won her first WTA Tour title in Nottingham, beating Jodie Burrage, who was in her first WTA final. Harriet Dart, Heather Watson, and Katie Swan are all ranked in the 100s and, despite some tricky draws, should be eyeing up a place in the later rounds. Also watch out for powerful, attacking player Sonay Kartal.

The top sixteen seeds, and a few interesting outsiders, have been analysed. The factors taken into account in this analysis are:

• 2023 WTA Tour Record
• Career Grass Court Record
• Recent form
• Recent form vs Top 10 ranked players
• The last three Wimbledon tournaments

Wimbledon 2023 Ladies’ Draw Betting Tips

Iga Swiatek 2pt 3/1 @ Betfred

Petra Kvitova 1pt 12/1 @ Bet365

Jelena Ostapenko 0.5pt EW 28/1 @ Bet365

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Event In Focus: Wimbledon Ladies’ Draw

Obviously this is the culmination of the short grass court swing on the ATP Tour. There is a lot of information that can be useful to us when assessing the players for this event, but the most relevant data has been harvested, displayed and analysed.

Ranking Analysis

Iga Swiatek is back to being a fairly dominant world number one after her triumph at Roland-Garros a couple of weeks ago. Her form is good enough to convince the bookmakers that she is the most likely winner of the tournament. The Grass Court ELO rankings (as compiled by Tennis Abstract, explanation here) do not agree. Swiatek’s wins on the grass obviously haven’t impressed the system too much and it ranks her only 29th in the world at this stage.

The official rankings match up with the bookmaker prices fairly well at the top, but there are some big changes outside the top three. Petra Kvitova is given a lot of respect, as are Karolina Muchova and Donna Vekic. The same cannot be said for Caroline Garcia, Beatriz Haddad Maia, and Maria Sakkari.

There are some shocks in the Grass ELO ratings, mainly as a result of so little grass court tennis being played in the calendar. Jessica Pegula is outside the top 100 on grass with Jelena Ostapenko ranked in the top 5, her recent WTA Birmingham title helping with that and perhaps proving her class on grass credentials.

2023 WTA Tour Form

Swiatek’s numbers across the season so far are scarcely believeable. She is currently running at 135 on total games won, holding serve over 80% of the time but also breaking her opponent’s serve over half of the time as well. She is excptionally dominant over the majority of players, but she can be pushed and beaten, as she has been five times this year.

Aryna Sabalenka also has dominant numbers, and in other seasons would definitely be in contention to be the best player in the world. The Belarussian is ready to strike if Swiatek isn’t in top form.

There are then a clutch of players around 110-114 games won that are interesting. Madison Keys is the experienced player in that set, not played as often as most, but has done fairly well in those tournaments. Barbora Krejcikova, Coco Gauff, and Karolina Muchova all fall in this impressive section too. However, Mirra Andreeva deserves a mention. The youngster has a small sample size but her numbers are exceptional.

Career Grass Court Analysis

The big three that we started by discussing at the top of the article don’t shine when it comes to comparing grass court careers with the field. Indeed, Petra Kvitova’s numbers are quite clear as the best in the field.

Ons Jabeur actually has the best win percentage in the field on grass, Coco Gauff, Elena Rybakina, and Madison Keys all have win percentages in the 70% range.

Qinwen Zheng is quite a surprising one. She has a great serve and a powerful game, perhaps it is the movement and footwork required on the grass that will not have been part of her development in China that is holding her back at this stage.

Form & Recent Wimbledon Record

Iga Swiatek comes into the Championships with a winning streak that stretches back ten matches to the Italian Open quarter-final, though that was a retirement rather than a loss. Her last loss was in the Madrid final, to Aryna Sabalenka. Indeed, her record against other top ten players is actually only good. There have been defeats to Rybakina (three times), Sabalenka, and Krejcikova in 2023.

Unsurprisngly, having those wins against Swiatek, Rybakina has the best recent record against other top ten players. For the lower ranked players, Haddad Maia and Kvitova have done well to win over half of their last ten matches against the best. Meanwhile, it will be tough for Coco Gauff to win a Grand Slam title with the level of difficulty that she is having against the other top ten players.

Recent Wimbledon records mainly go to show how much things change in women’s tennis. Missing Wimbledon 2020 meant that for the top seeds, a lot of them were very young or making their way in the game back in 2019 and most of them went out in the first round that year. Some of the top players were also missing in 2022 because of the conflict. This all serves to say that there isn’t a great deal of experience of players going deep at Wimbledon amongst the top seeds.

Not a single one of the players in the grid has three consecutive second week runs at Wimbledon. Ons Jabeur and Karolina Muchova are the two who managed to get into the second week on their last two visits.

Wimbledon Ladies’ Draw

Wimbledon, like all Grand Slams, has a 32-seed, 128-player draw.

Wimbledon Betting Tips

It’s a quite fascinating but frustrating draw for the ladies’ singles event. On one hand it is very open and there are chances for many players. From a personal perspective it is difficult because a number of the players that I fancied pre-draw have ended up in the same mini-section.

There are a number of high seeds that are vulnerable, such as Jessica Pegula and Caroline Garcia, who are both in the same quarter. Attacking that quarter seems to be a sensible strategy, but the problem is that there is a high level of competition in there. Pre-draw the names of Donna Vekic, Qinwen Zheng, Veronika Kudermetova, and Marketa Vondrousova were all of interest, all four are in this section. In the end, it was too difficult to untangle so the selections come from the other sections of the draw, including the favourite.

Iga Swiatek 2pts 3/1 @ Betfred

The Pole took her time to return to the tour after her hard-fought and emotional Roland-Garros triumph. She managed to get some grass court tennis into her legs this week at Bad Homburg, winning three matches, including getting her first Top 50 win on the surface.

Swiatek has been so dominant over players that are considerably lower ranked than her for some time now, and despite her possible discomfort on the surface, there is precious little competition for Swiatek until much later on in the tournament. She showed in the latter stages of Roland-Garros how much it means to her and that display of grit, if it can be replicated here, she could add the prestigious Wimbledon title to her growing list of accomplishments.

Petra Kvitova 1pt 12/1 @ Bet365

The Czech veteran was the champion here in 2011 and 2014. Though those triumphs were a long time ago now, it is still proof that she can handle the pressure. There has been further proof in 2023 that Kvitova still has the game as well. Winning in Miami was a shock, but she did it well, beating Elena Rybakina in the final.

She is a fantastic grass courter, as the data above demonstrates. Her title in Berlin was actually fairly facile, and further evidence that she has what it takes to finally add to her Wimbledon collection in the twilight of her career.

Jelena Ostapenko 0.5pt EW 25/1 @ Bet365

Ostapenko is always a risk to play with. The Latvian went to the school of “all out” tennis, she goes for her shots, and on a good day she is pretty unstoppable. The trouble is that on a bad day she can beat herself.

Again, though, the Latvian is already a Grand Slam champion having won the French Open as a youngster in 2017. Whilst she hasn’t been consistent at that level since then, she can do it and she knows that she can do it.