Wimbledon revisited: A history of No.1s foiled in the ladies' singles - The Championships, Wimbledon 2017 - Official Site by IBM
Wimbledon revisited: A history of No.1s foiled in the ladies' singles
Victoria Azarenka will no doubt hope to leave this particular club in the summer. READ MORE
By Paul Newman
Victoria Azarenka is in good company alongside the likes of Monica Seles, Jennifer Capriati and Justine Henin, but would no doubt prefer not to be there.
The 26-year-old from Belarus is one of 11 players who have reached No.1 in the world rankings but never won the ladies’ singles title at Wimbledon. For Azarenka, nevertheless, there is still plenty of time to add the Venus Rosewater Dish to the growing collection of trophies she has raised aloft.
Given her outstanding form in recent weeks, might this be her year?
The list of former world No.1s without a Wimbledon title on their CV stretches back to Tracy Austin, who topped the rankings for 21 weeks in 1980. The official Women’s Tennis Association computer rankings had been introduced five years earlier.
Austin was joined subsequently by some illustrious names, with Azarenka the most recent. Seles, Capriati, Henin, Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario, Kim Clijsters, Ana Ivanovic, Jelena Jankovic, Dinara Safina and Caroline Wozniacki are the other former world No.1s who have never claimed the greatest prize in tennis.
Given that she spent 178 weeks at the top of the world rankings – a record bettered by only five other players – and won a total of nine Grand Slam singles titles, Seles is perhaps the most surprising member of that list. She reached the Wimbledon final only once, but given her form at that time it was a surprise that she did not win the title.
Seles, who excelled on both clay and hard courts, won seven of the eight Grand Slam tournaments she played between 1991 and 1993. The exception was The Championships 1992 , where she coasted through her first five matches without dropping a set before facing Martina Navratilova, the nine-time champion, in the semi-finals. Seles won 6-2, 6-7, 6-4, only to face another of the all-time great champions, Steffi Graf, in the final.
There had been growing comment through The Championships that year about the fact that Seles screeched when she struck the ball. Two of her opponents, Navratilova and Nathalie Tauziat, had complained about the noise and the controversy reached a pitch going into the final. The controversy clearly embarrassed Seles, who was silent and subdued in a one-sided contest as Graf won 6-2, 6-1.
Sanchez-Vicario and Henin, who were both at their best on clay, are the only two former world No.1s who reached two Wimbledon finals and lost both of them. Sanchez-Vicario was another player unfortunate enough to be a contemporary of Graf, who beat the Spaniard in the final in both 1995  and 1996 . Having beaten Conchita Martinez, the defending champion, 6-3, 6-7, 6-1 in the 1995 semi-finals, Sanchez-Vicario was drawn into another lengthy duel in the final before Graf won 4-6, 6-1, 7-5.
In 1996 Sanchez-Vicario had to come from a set down to beat Sabine Appelmans in the fourth round but otherwise had a straightforward passage to the final, which Graf won 6-3, 7-5.
Henin, who won seven Grand Slam singles titles and was world No.1 for 117 weeks, lost in the Wimbledon finals of 2001  and 2006 . In 2001, when she was just 19, Henin overcame Capriati, the champion of both Melbourne and Paris, in the semi-finals before Venus Williams beat the Belgian 6-1, 3-6, 6-0 in a one-sided final, despite the American’s serve going into meltdown in the second set. In 2006 Henin beat Clijsters in the semi-finals before Mauresmo won the final 2-6, 6-3, 6-4.
11
The number of world No.1s that haven't won the ladies' singles
Clijsters usually performed well in the early rounds at The Championships but lost in both her semi-finals and twice in the quarter-finals. Austin had a similar record. In 1979 , when she was just 16, Austin beat a 35-year-old Billie Jean King in the quarter-finals before losing to Navratilova, the eventual champion. Capriati also lost in her only two semi-final appearances and went out in the quarter-finals on no fewer than five occasions.
Safina, who lost in all three of her Grand Slam finals, and Ivanovic, whose one victory in her three Grand Slam finals came at the French Open, both lost to Venus Williams in their only semi-final appearances at The Championships. Williams beat Ivanovic 6-2, 6-4 in 2007  and two years later crushed Safina 6-1, 6-0 in just 52 minutes. Jankovic and Wozniacki have competed at The Championships 12 and nine times respectively but neither have gone beyond the fourth round.
Which brings us to Azarenka, the most recent world No.1 without a Wimbledon title to her name. Twice an Australian Open champion and twice a runner-up at the US Open, Azarenka has performed well enough at The Championships in the past to suggest that she can lift the ultimate prize. She lost to the eventual champion on both of her previous appearances in the semi-finals, to Petra Kvitova in 2011  and to Serena Williams in 2012 .
The last two years have not been easy for Azarenka, who has had to deal with a troublesome foot injury, but her performances in 2016 have been improving with every tournament. Having beaten Serena Williams in the final in Indian Wells in March she went on to win the Miami Open in her most recent appearance without losing a set.
She is sure to be one of the players to watch at The Championships.