London, July 1 (EFE).- French Open champions, Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek, will be eying a rare feat as they begin their campaign in the season’s third Grand Slam tournament at Wimbledon, kicking off in south-west London on Monday.
Winning Roland Garros and Wimbledon across the English Channel in the same year is one of the most complicated challenges in tennis, known as the “Channel Slam,” with only five men and seven women having managed to win it.
Spanish star Alcaraz will be eying the feat with some experience after winning the Wimbledon men’s singles last year.
Polish player Swiatek, however, has never been able to go beyond the quarterfinals in the grass court tournament.
Her best result on this surface was reaching the semi-finals in the Bad Homburg Open in 2023.
Alcaraz, who won Roland Garros two weeks ago, made the transition to grass with the warm-up tournament at Queen’s , where he was unable to defend the title.
He has now been training for more than a week alongside Grigor Dimitrov, Stan Wawrinka, Flavio Cobolli, Jack Draper, and his coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero, to defend his Wimbledon title.
If he retains the title at the All England Club, Alcaraz will Rod Laver (1969), Bjorn Borg (1978, 1979, and 1980), Rafael Nadal (2008 and 2010), Roger Federer (2009), and Novak Djokovic (2021) in winning the French Open and Wimbledon in the same year.
Swiatek will face a tougher challenge regardless of her form and rankings to the ranks of Margaret Court (1970), Evonne Goolagong (1971), Billie Jean King (1972), Chris Evert (1974), Martina Navratilova (1982 and 1984), Steffi Graf (1988, 1993, 1995, and 1996), and Serena Williams (2002 and 2015). EFE
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