page_title: 2008 Wimbledon Championships
section_title: A tournament of upsets and surprises
hierarchical_section_title: 2008 Wimbledon Championships / Notable stories / A tournament of upsets and surprises
caption_attribution_description: Rainer Schuettler at the 2009 US Open
context_page_description: The 2008 Wimbledon Championships was a tennis tournament played on grass courts at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in Wimbledon, London in England. It was the 122nd edition of the Wimbledon Championships and were held from 23 June to 6 July 2008. It was the third Grand Slam tennis event of the year.
  Spanish player Rafael Nadal won the first Wimbledon title of his career; the first Grand Slam tournament he had won other than the French Open. Nadal defeated five-time defending champion Roger Federer in the final in what many regard as the greatest tennis match of all time. In the women's singles, Venus Williams claimed her fifth title, and first win over her sister Serena in a Wimbledon final. The performances of Britons Andy Murray in the men's singles and Laura Robson in the girls' singles were able to arouse significant interest from the home crowd.
  Following the completion of the 2007 Championships, the new fixed roof was put in place, in time for the 2008 Championships. The retractable section of the new roof was completed for the 2009 Championships.
context_section_description: The men's side of the draw was notable for the performances of Marat Safin and Rainer Schüttler, ranked 75th and 94th respectively on entering the tournament. Safin caused an upset in the second round when he defeated Australian Open champion Novak Djokovic in straight sets, on the way to his first ever Wimbledon semi-final, where he lost to Roger Federer. After more than five years without reaching the quarter-finals of a Grand Slam tournament, and thirteen consecutive Grand Slam tournaments without advancing past the second round, Schüttler also reached his first Wimbledon semi-final, where he was defeated in straight sets by the eventual champion Rafael Nadal. Schüttler had earlier defeated Arnaud Clément (who had previously not advanced to the quarter-finals of a Grand Slam tournament since reaching the final of the 2001 Australian Open) in an epic quarter-final that lasted two days.
  The women's side of the draw saw some of the biggest upsets in the tournament's history, in which the top four seeds—Ana Ivanovic, Jelena Janković, Maria Sharapova and Svetlana Kuznetsova—all failed to reach the quarter-finals. Maria Sharapova suffered her earliest exit at Wimbledon when she lost to Alla Kudryavtseva in the second round; this was also her earliest exit at a Grand Slam since the 2003 US Open. Recent French Open champion and newly crowned World No. 1 Ana Ivanovic was stunned in the third round by Chinese wild card entrant and World No. 133 Zheng Jie. This was the earliest exit by a top seed at Wimbledon since Martina Hingis lost in the first round in 2001, and Zheng Jie also became the lowest-ranked player ever to defeat a top seed at the tournament. Janković and Kuznetsova were both toppled in the fourth round by Tamarine Tanasugarn and Agnieszka Radwańska, respectively. This was the first time since seedings began at Wimbledon in 1927 (and the first time in the Open Era) that none of the top four seeds managed to advance past the fourth round. Zheng Jie became the second Chinese player (after Li Na in 2006) to reach the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, and the first wild card entry ever to reach the semi-finals (a feat later achieved by Sabine Lisicki in 2011), where she was defeated by eventual runner-up Serena Williams. Meanwhile Tanasugarn reached her first Grand Slam quarter-final by virtue of her victory over Janković, losing to the eventual champion Venus Williams.
caption: Rainer Schüttler reached his first Wimbledon semi-final
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