Venus Will Slam Wimbledon for the Threepeat!

It's that time of the year again, when we return to the All England Club for the current edition of the oldest tennis tournament in the world, Wimbledon. The women's draw has been held and five players have jumped out to me as potential winners of Wimbledon 2009:

Venus Williams, seeded third, is the defending champion and it'd be hard for anybody to bet against her adding to her personal collection of Wimbledon trophies. She already has five to her name!

And when we look at Venus as a potential winner, we can't leave out her sister, Serena. Serena is seeded second and lost in the finals last year to Venus. Simply put, never count Serena out of a Grand Slam tournament - she's already won all of them at least once in her career.

With the two obvious favorites out of the way - we can dismiss the number one seeded Dinara Safina until she produces some sort of result on grass and does something in a Grand Slam final. We'll look at another Russian as a dark horse candidate.

Maria Sharapova is a previous winner of Wimbledon, having won in 2004. But she's returning from surgery and played in the French Open sporting a bandage on her shoulder. Winning the entire tournament would be a reach, but she has already proven she can win Wimbledon and would just need some luck to continue a deep run into the tournament. Lowered expectations will take the pressure off her to perform and she already went deeper into the French Open than anybody thought she would. Her serving speed is a bit on the decline due to the surgery, but if she can adjust her game to it, she has all the tools she needs to go far in the tournament.

Another dark horse candidate would be Marion Bartoli, a Wimbledon finalist in 2007. If she can repeat that form from a couple of years ago, she can make it to the finals again, although the odds are stacked against her. She'll have to take out a couple of no-names and then probably meet Zvonareva before running into Dementieva if she gets that far. But upsets can and do occur. If enough lucky breaks are gotten by Bartoli, she can absolutely get to the finals again, but she'll have to go through a Williams sister at a minimum if the seedings win out.

My final pick would be Jelena Jankovic, a former No. 1 player, who's been riding a streak of bad results of late. Her game translates well to the grass courts of Wimbledon even though she's only reached the 4^th round as her career best result. With a couple of lucky ball breaks, she'd get to meet up with Venus Williams in the quarterfinals but getting through Venus would be a tall task for Jelena, but it's doable.

My pick for the 2009 Wimbledon women's winner is Venus Williams. I think she'll end up with her sixth title overall and go for the threepeat.

(Statistics were pulled from the official Wimbledon website.)