A player ranked No. 181 in the WTA rankings is the favorite to win the women’s singles title at Wimbledon.
This seems completely ridiculous until you realize that this player is 23-time major winner Serena Williams.
Entering the second week of The Championships, the seven-time Wimbledon singles champion is the Wimbledon betting odds favorite to win once again at the All England Club in a women’s tournament highlighted by the massive departure of top seeds. In an unprecedented carnage among the women’s seeds, only one of the top 10 seeds advanced out of the third round.
Williams is only competing in her fourth singles event since returning to the pro circuit after giving birth last fall. Her results have only warranted a WTA Tour singles ranking of No. 181, but the All England Club awarded Williams a special seeding of No. 25 to better reflect her amazing run of success on the grass courts as well as her improved form, as showcased in Paris. She has also won her last 14 matches at Wimbledon, dating back to 2015.
En route to reaching the fourth round, Williams has seen her average serve speed and ace total increase in each match. Williams would not have to play a seeded player until at least the semifinals and that could be No. 7 seed Karolina Pliskova, who, ironically, is the last player to defeat Williams at a Grand Slam tournament in the 2016 US Open semifinals. Since that loss, Williams won the 2017 Australian Open before skipping the next four majors during her pregnancy. In her major tournament comeback event at the 2018 French Open, Williams advanced to the fourth round before she was forced to withdraw from the event (not counting as a match loss) due to a shoulder injury.
Ranked No. 181, Williams would be the lowest-ranked woman to win a Wimbledon singles title and would also become the seventh mother win a major singles title in the history of the sport.
Pliskova, the former world No. 1 who has one of the best serves in the women’s game, has not embraced the grass as a favorite surface, despite her game being a good fit in the faster conditions. Prior to this year, she had not advanced past the second round at the All England Club.
No. 11 seed Angelique Kerber is the second-highest remaining seed left after the first week. The German is again finding her form that guided her to the No. 1 ranking in 2016, buoyed by titles at the Australian and US Opens and runner-up finishes at Wimbledon and the Olympics that year. She and No. 12 seed and 2017 French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia are the favorites to reach the final on the top of the draw. Former Australian Open finalist and world No. 4 Dominka Cibulkova may also be worth watching. She was knocked off of her No. 32 seeding from the tournament when the All England Club opted to award Serena Williams her special No. 25 seeding. Not happy about this decision, Cibulkova is playing with a bit of a chip on her shoulder and, as her past results have proven, she is capable of big wins late in Grand Slam tournaments.
