Tim Henman’s Wimbledon predictions – including one ‘dangerous floater’

Tim Henman wears many hats during the Wimbledon fortnight.

As a member of the board of the All England Club, he is a hands-on part of the management of the tournament, involved in daily meetings – time allowing – to respond to issues within the grounds or on the court.

As a BBC pundit, he spends hours a day on screen or in a commentary box, offering a familiar face and voice to break down the game for the millions of casual viewers who only watch tennis for two weeks a year.

And then he is of course a former British No 1 and former world No 4, whose opinion and predictions carry significant weight.

But even he admits that he might be accused of being “predictable” when he plumps for defending champion Carlos Alcaraz as his men’s singles winner.

“The way Alcaraz is playing and his skillset, the options, the strings to his bow that he has at the age of 21 is phenomenal,” Henman says.

“And you add to that his athletic ability, the way he moves on any court, let alone a grass court, and his ability to find solutions in the most difficult moments is incredible. He’s won three slams on three different surfaces.

“It’s going to be fascinating to see how many slams he ends up with. So I wouldn’t be surprised if he defends his title.”

Henman probably was surprised when Alcaraz lost his last warm-up match before Wimbledon, beaten by Jack Draper at Queen’s, although the new British No 1 was keen to play down a statement victory in his pre-tournament news conference.

“It was his first couple of matches on grass last week,” Draper said, with typical humility.

“Grass is a very different surface. You always get a lot of shock results on the grass courts.”

If ever there is a place for shock results of course, it’s the women’s draw. No one could have predicted Marketa Vondrousova winning her maiden major, a feat that seems unlikely to be repeated.

But Henman is predicting a first-time Wimbledon winner – with two names standing out.

“I’ve got a funny feeling about Aryna Sabalenka,” Henman adds.

“I think she’s such a big ball striker and she’s so aggressive. I think she’s playing with so much confidence in the big events now that she’s got a slam under her belt. I think she’s going to be tough to beat.

“It will be interesting to see how [Naomi] Osaka plays because I thought her performance in Paris on perhaps her least favourite surface was incredibly good against [Iga] Swiatek, getting to match point.

“On grass, when you hit the ball that aggressively… she’s going to be a dangerous floater.”

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Sabalenka herself has been cool on her chances at SW19 after retiring from her last preparatory tournament with a shoulder problem, insisting “there is always a chance” she does not even make it to her first-round match.

“It’s really a specific injury, and it’s really a rare one,” Sabalenka said.

“Probably I’m just the second or the third tennis player who injured that muscle.

“The most annoying thing is that I can do anything. I can practice, I can hit my groundstrokes. I’m struggling with serving. That’s really annoying.

“But as someone who been fighting through a lot of different pains in the past months, I still have my hopes.”

The name Iga Swiatek rarely comes up in these conversations, even though she is the runaway world No 1 who even joked about doing pre-season on grass to try and improve on her best result ever here, a quarter-final last year.

“It’s hard for me to be considered as an underdog I think anywhere now. But for sure I feel like I really need to focus on just the process of being a better player here and learning how to play the best kind of tennis here on grass,” Swiatek said.

She is still a shorter price to win the title than any of the Brits, including national No 1 Katie Boulter and 2021 US Open champion Emma Raducanu, although Henman has high hopes for both.

Who though will go further? “I think probably Boulter. She is knocking on the door of the top 20,” Henman says.

“She’s just a bit more experienced and played a lot more tennis. But I definitely think they both could be in the second week. It would be interesting to see.

“Those British stories are fascinating in the championship. When we have British men and women doing well, the crowd get behind them, it creates so many stories. Fingers crossed, there will be a lot more of them this year.”