Federer: still the man to beat

Ana Ivanovic will of course be going into the tournament as the world number one after winning the French Open and she is more than capable of going all the way this year, but I wouldn't want to put money on her.

Quotes of the week

Tennis is in a golden period according to Gerry Williams, who believes the game has never been more competitive.

In his second piece he looks in detail at both the men's and women's draw and analyses the great British hope...

The Men's Draw

It's very difficult to look past the top three seeds, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.

Federer and Nadal have taken tennis to a different level. Federer is the most gifted player that I've ever seen and I think he's even slightly more gifted than Pete Sampras. Sampras used to play the beautiful game, but Federer plays it even slightly better.

At the start of the year Federer was suffering from glandular fever and by his standards failed at the Australian Open, going out at the semi-finals in straight sets to Djokovic. But anyone who has ever had glandular fever will tell you that it really wears you down over a long time.

He was then killed by Nadal in the final of the French Open and I think a lot of people now think that Nadal is now at a peak and probably unbeatable, even though grass is not his surface.

But I think people should be weary of that thought for two reasons. Firstly, Nadal may have peaked too soon for Wimbledon. He will have played two weeks at the French expending this enormous amount of physical and nervous energy. He then went to Queens and won two terribly important games there. Meanwhile Federer has been a bit more relaxed in his preparation and played at Halle in Germany which is a sub division event.

And secondly I think we could have a repeat of what happened last year where Nadal gets into a position where you think he can win and then Federer goes into overdrive and no body can touch Federer when he is in overdrive, so I would just caution people not to forget that.

Djokovic is a wonderful player, but I don't think he will be up to it physically over a two week tournament. He doesn't have a big shot that can dominate a point, so he consistently has to play long rallies to win a point, whereas both Nadal and Federer can both win a point very quickly.

The Women's Draw

Tennis as a whole is really going through a golden period and the women's game is evidence of that - It really is very competitive this year.

Ana Ivanovic will of course be going into the tournament as the world number one after winning the French Open and she is more than capable of going all the way this year, but I wouldn't want to put money on her.

If I was going to put my money anywhere it would probably be on for Maria Sharapova because she hit's the ball so hard and has such amazing tenacity on every single shot that she plays.

People over here don't like the way she grunts after every shot, but nowhere else in the world does anyone pay any attention to it.

The Williams sisters both got dumped out of the French and people accuse them of not playing enough now - and there is an element of that because they do have other things that they seem to do, but anyone who dismisses them would be wrong to do so.

My biggest disappointment however, is that Justine Henin will not be there this year, because in the last five years she has been the outstanding woman player, but unfortunately Wimbledon has never seen her at her best.

My hunch is that her sudden retirement before the French was to do with her needing some joy and stability in her private life and it wouldn't surprise me in a couple of years if she makes a return. I really hope she does because she is the most beautiful sight on the tennis court.

British hopes

British tennis is in a pretty perilous position when you think back to all the pros that we used to have and of course we don't have Tim Henman now.

I don't think Andy Murray has a reasonable chance of winning Wimbledon this year and I say that despite the fact that he has beaten most of the best players in the world. But it's one thing to beat them in lesser events and quite another to beat them at a Grand Slam.

I think Murray is one of the cleverest of all the young players out there today - he's got a wide selection of shots and he has a very mature understanding of tactics. There is a plan in every shot he plays and I admire him enormously.

But his weakness is that he is the only top British tennis player. Henman always had Greg Rusedski who was vying with him all the time, even though they get on. If you look at Djokovic there are a bunch of Serbian players and it's the same in the women's game with Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic.

But Murray has no one, which means every time he walks onto the court of falls onto his thumb or sprains his leg, it's front page news and that is not easy.

He is one of the best five or six young players in the world though and I think it will be two or three years before we see the best of him.