Serena wIlliams

With less than 48 hours to the start of the Wimbledon tournament, Serena Williams the World Number One, says she is not under pressure to win halfway to her completing a sweep of all the four Grand slams.

“Personally, it doesn’t make it feel any different, which I think is a good thing ’cause I don’t feel any pressure to win all four,” she said. “I’ve been saying that, but I really don’t feel that pressure. Maybe if I would happen to win here, then maybe I might start feeling it after that.

“I think the fact that I lost so early the past couple years definitely makes me motivated. But I think that also gives me a little less pressure because I haven’t done well here in the past two years. It makes me feel like, OK, I’ll be fine. I have nothing to lose here. I don’t have many points to defend here. So it’s just like trying to have fun, go through it.”

Williams will close to within one slam of equalling Steffi Graf’s haul of 22 should she reclaim her crown at SW19. Surely, you would expect each triumph to no longer rouse the same level of elation.

It has been 15 years of winning them, after all. Not quite, Williams explains.

“You know, two years ago I would say yes, I definitely enjoyed winning them more, like a year and a half ago, two years ago, than I did when I was younger,” she said. “Now I think it’s even. When you’re young and you first win, it’s like, great. You want to go to all these different countries, winning all these Grand Slams, it’s an amazing feeling. But now I still feel that way. I feel just as excited, not more excited, but I feel just as excited.”

Should Williams power through the draw here in London, to add to her successes at last year’s US Open and at this season’s Australian and French Opens, she would have all four majors in her possession. In tennis, much importance and significance is attached to the Gregorian calendar, and so winning four majors across two seasons doesn’t have quite the same mythology as doing so in one year (though clearly it is an extraordinary achievement in itself). This non-calendar-year sweep doesn’t have an official title as such, which was why Williams – who first achieved the Serena Slam from 2002-3 – thought it needed a name (if there was someone else who first thought of that twist on Grand Slam, it was William who ensured it took hold). The only other woman to have held all four majors simultaneously, but without achieving the calendar-year Grand Slam, is Martina Navratilova from 1983-4.

This is the first time since 2001, when Jennifer Capriati was the champion at Melbourne Park and Roland Garros, that a player has arrived at Wimbledon with the chance to rip through the entire year. Holding up the Venus Rosewater Dish would put Williams three quarters of the way there, ‘only’ a US Open title to go. If everything goes Williams’ way in London and then in New York, the US Open will see her match two of Graf’s greatest feats; in addition to total dominance of the Grand Slam year, she would also draw level with the German’s Open-era record of 22 majors.

Completing the calendar-year Grand Slam gives you membership of the most exclusive club in women’s tennis. So far, there are only three members, one from the amateur age and two from the post-1968 Open era. The first woman to conquer all four majors in a season was the teenage Maureen Connolly, an American known as ‘Little Mo’, who did so in 1953. We will never know whether she could have done so for a second or even a third time as just a year later, in 1954, she was hit by a cement truck as she rode he horse, and so severe was the damage to her leg that she was unable to compete again.

The first from the modern era was Australia’s Margaret Court in 1970, and then a teenage Graf rampaged through 1988 (she also won the Olympic tournament in Seoul that year, so it became known as the Golden Slam). Graf recently spoke of the pressures she was under when she competed in New York. “I was feeling the expectation around me that wasn’t mine, and that was becoming suffocating and stopping me concentrating on my tournament,” Graf has told L’Equipe. “It was terrible. Everyone was talking to me about this chance and I couldn’t understand the attention. I was just relieved when it was finished – 27 years on, I find it unbelievable to have been able to resist the pressure.”

In the men’s game, Budge is one of only two men to have won all four majors in a year, the other being Australia’s Rod Laver, who did so twice, in 1962 and 1969. A calendar-year Grand Slam is the rarest of events. Having said that, it’s possible that this season could see a couple of calendar-year Grand Slams, as Williams isn’t the only one who comes to London with her hopes still alive. Lucie Safarova is having great success this year on both the singles court – the Czech was the runner-up to Williams at Roland Garros – and also on the doubles court, where she has won the Australian and French Open titles with America’s Bethanie Mattek-Sands.

Note how two of the three female singles players to have achieved the calendar-year Grand Slam did so as teenagers. Williams is at the other end of the spectrum. If she wins this Wimbledon, the 33-year-old would become the oldest woman in history to score a major singles title, even older than Navratilova was when she was the 1990 Wimbledon champion. And at the conclusion of the US Open she will be almost 34. Being in her mid-thirties hasn’t constrained Williams – she is close to becoming the first player to qualify for the BNP Paribas WTA Finals Singapore presented by SC Global.

“Serena’s an incredible athlete,” Graf told L’Equipe. “In my view, she has shots – weapons, in fact – that are unique in the history of the game.”

* With contributions by Mark Hodgkinson, the author of ‘Game, Set and Match: Secret Weapons of the World’s Top Tennis Players’ (Bloomsbury).