Hubert Hurkacz owns one of the most reliable serves on grass, and 2026 was about proving the rest of his body could support it again after a long injury layoff. He finished 15th in the men’s GTC Grass Rankings with a GTC Grass Rating of 108, up four places, though he ended the season flagged for fitness.
Grass at a glance
- GTC Grass Rating: 108, 15th in the men’s rankings (19th before the season, on 103)
- Pillars: Lawn Form 58, Arsenal 78, Wimbledon 54, Nerve 44
- Nationality: Poland
- Best Wimbledon result: Semi-final (2021)
- Grass titles: Halle 2022
- Status: Flagged injured after retiring at Wimbledon 2026
How Hubert plays on grass
The serve carries his grass game. It is fast, well disguised and accurate, and on a low-bouncing court it produces streams of aces and short points. At Halle in 2026 he hit 11 aces and won 90 per cent of his first-serve points against Andrey Rublev. He has the reach and soft hands to finish at the net, and his slice backhand stays low enough to buy time. That combination earns an Arsenal score of 78, the strongest part of his profile.
The return is the limitation. He breaks serve less often than the other leading grass players, so many of his sets come down to one break or a tie-break, and his record in tight finishes is uneven. A Nerve score of 44 reflects that: in 2026 he lost a deciding set 5-7 at Halle and could not close out a match at Wimbledon from two sets up, partly because of injury.
Grass record
Hurkacz’s best grass summer came in 2021, when he reached the Wimbledon semi-finals. He won Halle in 2022 and returned to the final there in 2024, losing to Jannik Sinner.
Wimbledon 2024 then cost him a year. He damaged his knee in a second-round match against Arthur Fils, needed surgery on a torn meniscus and missed the 2025 Championships.
The 2026 grass season
He came into the grass ranked 103rd and opened at Halle with a 6-3, 6-2 win over 8th seed Rublev, before Daniel Altmaier came through 3-6, 6-3, 7-5. The rating moved only from 103 to 104.
Wimbledon, his first in two years, went much better. Unseeded, he beat 11th seed Casper Ruud, then Sebastian Ofner and 21st seed Tommy Paul to reach the fourth round. Against Jan-Lennard Struff he won the first two sets, then needed several medical timeouts for back and abdominal trouble and retired trailing 2-4 in the fifth. The score at retirement was 6-3, 7-6(5), 6-7(2), 5-7, 2-4 from his side. The run lifted his rating from 104 to 108, but the injury flag stays on his profile.
Looking ahead to 2027
For 2027 the questions are physical before they are tactical. A full grass swing would probably mean Halle, where he has a title and a final, ahead of Wimbledon, and he needs to reach both fit enough to play best-of-five matches. On court, a few more return games would turn tight sets his way. If the body holds, a realistic target is a deep Halle run and a second Wimbledon quarter-final, which would put him back near the top 10 on the GTC list.
