Next week, the annual Wimbledon Tennis tournament begins in London SW19, and yet again, it will be seen as the most important and glamorous of all the Grand Slam events and the one that all the top players are most keen to win. The tournament, properly known as the All England Open Tennis Championship is the longest established of all the global tennis competitions, and has been won by all the greatest players of all time (and many others too).

The two week long grass court competition will feature the usual heroics and surprises, and all the challenges of a normal year. There will be days lost to rain (inevitably), there may well be a bit of Cliff Richard, there will be strawberries and champagne. There will be a failure to proceed into the second week by any of the British Players, and Roger Federer will probably win.

Wimbledon’s charm is not in its final, it is in the way that the tricky grass courts ensure that some of the better players will be caught out along the way, and the final is not always between the two best players – although I say it again, Roger Federer will probably still win the tournament.

In the women’s game, it is a bit tougher to call. There are a number of strong players including Serena Williams and her sister, Maria Sharapova, and a couple of others. This year, my money will be on Serena Williams recapturing the title – she is looking pretty strong at the moment, and could do very well.

This year will probably be the last appearance for home favorite Tim Henman, one of the nearly men of Tennis. He has often been accused of lacking the killer instinct to become a real champion, but has always done well in front of his home crowd, and could make the second week. Young pretender Andy Murray who was incidentally a pupil at the school in Dunblane at the time when the massacre there took place – is also a possibility for the quarter finals, although his temperament is a bit suspect under pressure, and he has yet to win a major tournament.

One of the best ways of enjoying Wimbledon if you are lucky enough to get tickets on a sunny day is the chance to explore the outer courts where the low seeded players who aren’t quite up to a slot on centre court or court number 1 play. In the back area of Wimbledon you can wander from one match to another meeting with people and players alike in order to enjoy a wider variety of tennis than you see on the show courts.

The problem with any tennis tournament is that there is little to do if it is a rainy day, so make sure that you have some other plans if there is no tennis. The centre of London is relatively close to Wimbledon, and accessible by the Tube, so if you are struggling for entertainment on a day when the tennis is rained off, why not head into the city for a spot of shopping, or an afternoon show in the West End?