Wimbledon Tennis Tournament

WIMBLEDON, England -- Humanity has failed since 1980 to find even one male who could hack the gruel to win on both Parisian clay and Wimbledon grass in the same June-July, but here comes a Spanish force of nature with a fabulous chance.

WIMBLEDON, England -- The eve of Wimbledon dovetailed with another surge of chatter about tennis' sore subject of the last 10 months: match-fixing. The Times of London and the Independent both published lengthy Sunday articles detailing that the 45 matches in the last five years deemed suspicious in an independent panel's May report included eight from Wimbledon and four from the 2007 men's singles.

WIMBLEDON, England -- For all its repressed fashion and imposed decorum, Wimbledon sure has shown a knack for panache through the years, with the 2008 event already doubly historic. It's believed to be the first time somebody warmed up in a trench coat, and it's believed to be the first time a player walked over to sit next to his opponent during a changeover as if they were some doubles team.

WIMBLEDON, England -- Here's Alla Kudryavtseva. She's 20. She reads Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn. She evidently has a Rottweiler and a parrot. Her father was a world champion Greco-Roman wrestler. She studies at the University of Physical Culture in Moscow and trains in Boca Raton, Fla. She's great fun in a news conference. At No. 154 in the world, she's also emblematic of a fresh notion born this Wimbledon, that the women's tennis tour might possess more depth than reputed.

WIMBLEDON, England -- A convulsive first week has forged a retro Wimbledon, such a throwback to 2002 that if you squint really well you can almost see the Lakers sweeping the Nets and Shaq-and-Kobe coexisting. Here 16 women have reached the second week, and their configuration strongly suggests a final of Williams vs. Williams, as occurred remarkably for five of the six Grand Slam events between the 2002 French and the 2003 Wimbledon, but not since. There's No.

WIMBLEDON, England -- Next Sunday evening might just bring the All England Club a black swan, a white peacock, a double rainbow, a pink diamond, a July snow, a clean congressman. When they line up the ball kids and bring out the royals and hand out the men's singles trophy, a male Spaniard might just take it and hold it aloft, in which case 22-year-old Rafael Nadal from the island of Mallorca would've forged a rarity and epitomized a profound U-turn in Wimbledon history.

WIMBLEDON, England -- A peculiar, obscure tennis match from Tuesday, June 25, 2002, has breathed on ever since with a relevance few in its Centre Court audience would've forecast. On that afternoon, the defending Wimbledon champion remained Goran Ivanisevic of Croatia. Pete Sampras lingered one day from his last Wimbledon match, an incomprehensible loss to 145th-ranked George Bastl. And an 18-year-old qualifier from Croatia, Mario Ancic, ranked No. 154, played his first Grand Slam match.

WIMBLEDON, England -- Here's a snippet from Williams World, where one likely Wimbledon finalist says of another likely Wimbledon finalist, who happens to be her sister, "I would [love to] have her legs. She has the sexiest legs." And here's another snippet from Williams World, where one likely finalist says that if the other likely finalist happens to lose early in a tournament, "I'm always sad when she leaves and she's gone. It's not the same."

WIMBLEDON, England -- As an exhilarating and surprising Wimbledon semifinalist, Zheng Jie will win at least 187,500 British pounds, which on Tuesday came to almost $374,000 -- about 20% of her $1.815 million in career earnings. Hailing from Chengdu, Sichuan province, China, the epicenter of the May 12 earthquake, she plans on giving an undetermined percentage of her winnings to earthquake relief. "Yeah, it's hard for me because in China, sometimes it's a different pressure," she said.

Saturday morning, on the pockmarked grass at Wimbledon's center court, two sisters from Compton will trade booming serves and bolo-punch forehands for the All England title. When the last ball is struck and Venus and Serena Williams embrace at net, they will have finished facing off in a Grand Slam final for the seventh time, the third time on British soil. This is a supremely consistent duo: A Williams sister has played in the Wimbledon women's singles final every year this century but one.