Belinda Bencic is one of the earliest ball-strikers in the women’s game, and on grass that timing has produced a junior Wimbledon title, an Eastbourne title and a Wimbledon semi-final in 2025. An ankle injury cost her both warm-up events in 2026, and she finished 9th in the GTC Grass Rankings with an unchanged GTC Grass Rating of 116.
Grass at a glance
- GTC Grass Rating: 116, 9th in the women’s rankings (6th before the season, also on 116)
- Pillars: Lawn Form 68, Arsenal 78, Wimbledon 72, Nerve 58
- Nationality: Switzerland
- Best Wimbledon result: Semi-final (2025)
- Grass titles: Eastbourne 2015
- Junior: Wimbledon girls’ champion 2013
- Plays: Right-handed, two-handed backhand
How Belinda plays on grass
Bencic plays close to the baseline and redirects pace rather than generating it. On grass that suits her well: the ball arrives low and fast, and her short swings and early contact let her use the opponent’s speed to hit angles and change direction down the line. Her backhand is the steadier wing and her return is a strength, often taken on the rise to put servers under pressure from the first ball.
Her own serve is accurate rather than powerful, so she wins fewer free points than the big hitters and has to hold through rallies. She will come forward to finish points she has opened with angles, and her hands at the net are good. That mix of timing, return and court sense is reflected in an Arsenal score of 78.
The Nerve figure of 58 is lower than the rest of her profile. Against heavier hitters she can lose control of matches she has led, as happened at Wimbledon in 2026, where she won the first set and could not close.
Grass record
Bencic won the Wimbledon girls’ title in 2013, beating Taylor Townsend in the final. Two years later she won her first WTA title at Eastbourne, beating Agnieszka Radwanska in the final, after finishing runner-up to Camila Giorgi in ‘s-Hertogenbosch earlier that month. She also reached the Mallorca final in 2019.
For a decade her Wimbledon record was steady without going past the fourth round, which she reached in 2015, 2018 and 2023. She missed 2024, and in 2025 she went further than ever, beating Ekaterina Alexandrova in the fourth round and Mirra Andreeva in the quarter-final before losing the semi-final to Iga Swiatek.
The 2026 grass season
Bencic was seeded 4th at Queen’s with a first-round bye, but before her opening match she announced a minor injury to her right ankle and withdrew from both Queen’s and Berlin, with Wimbledon her priority. Her rating held at 116 through the swing because she played no matches. At Wimbledon, seeded 11th, she came through three rounds, including a second-round meeting with Wang Xinyu, to reach the fourth round, where she met Coco Gauff. Bencic took the first set 6-4 but lost 6-4, 3-6, 4-6 in a match finished just before the curfew, and the defeat gave Gauff her first Wimbledon quarter-final. Her rating ended on 116, but others rose past her and she slipped from 6th to 9th.
Looking ahead to 2027
A full warm-up is the first priority. Bencic needs matches on grass to time the ball the way her game requires, and 2026 showed how much an interrupted preparation costs. A realistic schedule is Queen’s or Berlin, then possibly Bad Homburg, before Wimbledon. The Wimbledon target is another quarter-final or better, and a second grass title would lift her Lawn Form score and her rating back towards 120.
