The Five Most Memorable Women of Wimbledon

Wimbledon’s been won and done, but some of the women who did the winning—and for that matter the losing, acing, slipping, screaming, and trash-talking—won’t be forgotten for a while.

Before the hard court season begins, culminating in the U.S. Open—the year’s last Grand Slam—let’s stop to consider some of the women we watched at Wimbledon.

Sometimes with love, sometimes with hate, but rarely with indifference.

There was a lot of "in with the new."

Playing in her first Wimbledon, teenager Melanie Oudin showed that an American woman can make it all the way to the fourth round even if her last name is not "Williams." On her way to Wimbledon’s second week, she beat former World No. 1 Jelena Jankovic.

German teenager Sabine Lisicki, who’s never won a professional grass-court tennis match, used her big serve to make it one round further in the biggest grass court tournament of all. She lost in the quarterfinals to current World No. 1 Dinara Safina, but not before taking the first set.

While it was refreshing to see the new, it was nice to see that at the same time, there wasn’t a lot of "out with the old."

The Old School ladies showed that they can still get the job done. The three oldest players in the top 10 made it to the semifinals.

Also, interestingly, considering some of the nonsense spewed about the chaos at the top of women’s tennis, the last four women in the tournament were the top four seeds.

Not all of them made this list, and neither did some other worthy women, such as Russian Elena Vesnina, who made it to the second week of the tournament in the singles, doubles, and mixed doubles, and Argentinian Gisela Dulko, who upset Maria Sharapova only to be asked in her post-match interview how she feels about being a pin-up and whether she has a boyfriend.

These questions, like the women on this list, showed that the more things change, the more they stay the same. That’s a good thing when it comes to these women, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

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