Carlos Alcaraz will start his quest for a 3rd straight Wimbledon title and put his career-best 18-match successful streak on the road in opposition to harmful Italian Fabio Fognini, and girls’s high seed Aryna Sabalenka will open her marketing campaign versus Canadian qualifier Carson Branstine.
Friday’s draw performed on the All England Membership produced its typical intrigue with some eye-catching first-round clashes.
Males’s high seed Jannik Sinner, crushed by Alcaraz within the French Open last, meets fellow Italian Luca Nardi, and sixth seed Novak Djokovic, looking for to tie Roger Federer’s document of eight Wimbledon singles titles, has a tough opener in opposition to world No. 40 Alexandre Muller.
Defending girls’s champion Barbora Krejcikova, the seventeenth seed who pulled out of the Eastbourne event Thursday with a thigh pressure, faces Alexandra Eala of the Philippines.
No. 2 Coco Gauff’s first-round opponent is Ukraine’s Dayana Yastremska. Third seed Jessica Pegula, Gauff’s potential semifinal opponent, performs Italian qualifier Elisabetta Cocciaretto.
Fourth seed Jasmine Paolini, the runner-up at Wimbledon final yr, faces Anastasija Sevastova of Latvia and is seeded to satisfy Sabalenka within the semifinals.
Britain has 23 gamers within the singles occasions, essentially the most for the house nation since 1984, with males’s fourth seed Jack Draper carrying the load of expectation on his shoulders after a fast rise. Draper faces a troublesome path, although, if he’s to emulate two-time champion Andy Murray.
Draper, 23, has a tough opener in opposition to Thirty eighth-ranked Sebastian Baez and will face previous runner-up Marin Cilic of Croatia in Spherical 2 and Kazakhstan’s Alexander Bublik, whom he misplaced to at Roland Garros, within the third spherical.
To win the title, Draper might must beat Djokovic within the quarterfinals, Sinner within the semis and Alcaraz within the last.
Britain’s girls’s No. 1 Emma Raducanu opens in opposition to compatriot Mingge Xu, one in all three British teenage wild playing cards within the girls’s draw. Ought to 2021 US Open champion Raducanu win that, she would play 2023 Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova or thirty second seed McCartney Kessler within the second spherical earlier than a possible third-round assembly with Sabalenka.
One potential standout second-round match might function Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in opposition to four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka.
Alcaraz, who warmed up for Wimbledon by successful the Queen’s Membership title, will probably be cautious of the risk posed by the enigmatic Fognini, though the 38-year-old Italian participant just isn’t the pressure he was when he reached ninth within the rankings in 2019 and has by no means been previous the third spherical in 14 earlier appearances at Wimbledon.
Alcaraz might then face British qualifier Oliver Tarvet, the world No. 719 whose reward for reaching the primary draw is a first-round match in opposition to Swiss qualifier Leandro Riedi. Alcaraz’s potential semifinal opponent is No. 3 Alexander Zverev, who performs France’s Arthur Rinderknech in his opening match.
Gauff, coming off her second main title on the French Open, will open Wimbledon on Tuesday in opposition to Dayana Yastremska, a 2024 Australian Open semifinalist.
Win that, and Gauff may face former No. 1 and two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka within the second spherical, whereas a rematch with No. 28 seed Sofia Kenin might await within the third. Kenin eradicated Gauff within the opening spherical at Wimbledon two years in the past.
Petra Kvitova, the 2011 and 2014 Wimbledon champion who introduced she is going to retire later this yr, takes on No. 10 Emma Navarro within the first spherical.
As defending males’s champion, Alcaraz will open play on Centre Courtroom on Monday, which can function the underside half of the boys’s draw and the highest half of the ladies’s draw.
Krejcikova will start play on Centre Courtroom on Tuesday.
Reuters and The Related Press contributed to this report.