Wimbledon champion Jannik Sinner seeks to keep his cool – and his title

The players landed in London over the past week, filtering in from the small selection of grass tournaments available to play as warm-ups ahead of the big showdown in SW19. On Tuesday, last year’s men’s champion Jannik Sinner began practising on the grass courts of Wimbledon. His main opposition for the tournament also hit the city this week, in the form of a heatwave which saw temperatures in London hit 34 degrees.

If Sinner were to sit down and make a list of his greatest enemies, it would likely be a struggle between Carlos Alcaraz and the sun as to who would be number one. Alcaraz has been dispensed with over the past couple of months, ruled out of first the French Open and then Wimbledon with a wrist issue. The sun is proving more tricky to shake off. 

It had looked like Sinner would sail serenely towards a first French Open title at Roland-Garros, which would have secured a career Grand Slam, until he encountered those temperatures above 30 degrees celsius on Court Philippe-Chatrier. Despite leading 6-3, 6-2, 5-1 against Juan Manuel Cerundolo, then the world number 56, he fell apart, eventually losing over five sets. He cited dizziness and leg cramping as the cause, although fell short of blaming the heat, and instead cited just having a rough morning.

Sinner’s issues with heat have been well-documented throughout his career. He was clearly struggling during his third-round match against Eliot Spizzirri at this year’s Australian Open, but the tournament’s heat rules meant that the match ended up being delayed. He had also previously had to retire injured at the Shanghai Masters in October after cramping.

He was pictured at his Wimbledon practice session with a bag of ice perched on top of his head, and he has also been wearing a cooling vest. Speaking after an exhibition match against Cameron Norrie at the Hurlingham Club, Sinner said that his team were working on solutions to his issues with the heat.

“We did some testing, we tried to understand what happened, we came to a conclusion, which is very good,” he said. 

“So we worked very much, we changed the work a little bit as well, trying to see how the body reacts to different conditions.”

Sinner is unlikely to be as affected by the heat as he was in France, with temperatures set to drop over the next week, while both Centre Court and No. 1 Court have roofs that can close, bringing the temperature down to around 25 degrees with air conditioning. That is bad news for his opponents, who increasingly seem like they have to hope he trips himself up as opposed to managing to put him to the sword themselves.

That is not so much the case for defending Wimbledon women’s champion Iga Świątek. Świątek’s 6-0, 6-0 win over Amanda Anisimova in last year’s final was a brutally dominant victory, but the ensuing year has been difficult. She parted ways with coach Wim Fissette in March, appointing in his place Emma Raducanu’s former coach Francisco Roig. Roig could not fix her form ahead of her favoured Slam, the French Open, which she has won four times, and she lost in the fourth round there to Marta Kostyuk. Her first grass-court match of the season meanwhile ended in a 5-7, 6-2, 3-6 loss to Emma Navarro in the round of 16 in Bad Homburg on Wednesday.

The most concerning element of Świątek’s decline in form has been her mental collapse. The number of double faults and unforced errors have continued to rise, and she has recently shown little of the ruthlessness that so humiliated Anisimova last July. She faces a potentially tough first round draw against doubles-specialist Taylor Townsend. Yet the lack of form from anyone on the women’s tour, in combination with Wimbledon historically being the most unpredictable of the Slams for the women, makes it hard to pick out any firm favourite heading into the fortnight.

British hopes are looking fairly thin on the ground. Emma Raducanu is seeded 30th and has made a positive start to the grass court-season, with her run to the final at Queen’s her biggest success since she won the US Open. However, there are doubts around her fitness after she was reportedly spotted wearing a protective boot on Wednesday and missed her booked practice session on Thursday. She also did not practice on Friday, but has been drawn against Croatia’s Antonia Ruzic.

Jack Draper, meanwhile, is unseeded due to his long injury layoff, setting up the pick of the first round matches when he will face Taylor Fritz. Draper was last year’s fourth seed with Fritz last year’s fifth to show what a blockbuster this could be. He won his first match since March this week when he beat Marcos Giron at Eastbourne, complete with Andy Murray in his corner. Draper brought Murray in to help him through the grass season, but notwithstanding some positive results on the south coast, it would be unfair to expect Draper to return at his previous levels. Despite a career-high ranking of four in the world, he has never actually made it past the second round at Wimbledon.

Cameron Norrie and Sonay Kartal were the high-flying Brits last summer, as Norrie reached the quarter-finals and Kartal the fourth round. Kartal will not be competing due to injury, with Katie Boulter the next highest-ranked British woman in the draw after Raducanu. Norrie meanwhile lost in the opening round of Queen’s, but he has made the quarter-finals in Indian Wells and Barcelona this year. If the draw were to open up for him, he might again fancy a strong run here.

Ultimately, the biggest attention at the start of the tournament will be on Serena and Venus Williams. The duo will be participating in the doubles, while Serena will also make a return to singles, opening against Australian Maya Joint, who has had a tough 2026. How long they last in either competition is really anyone’s guess, but the crowds will surely flock to see the two tennis legends playing at the ages of 44 and 46 respectively.

Photograph by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images