Wimbledon 2026 starts Monday at the All England Lawn Tennis Club in London, and on the most rarefied surface in tennis, fans should expect surprises of all kinds.
In the men’s draw, Jannik Sinner is seeking to defend his title, while Novak Djokovic goes in search of yet more tennis history. In the women’s draw, Iga Świątek wants to keep hold of her trophy too, but Aryna Sabalenka, Elena Rybakina and more contenders are waiting to unseat her.
But whoever lifts the trophy is never the only storyline at a major, and nor should it be. There are the players who thrive on their home courts; the rising talents taking their first steps onto the biggest stages, and the statesmen and stateswomen of the sport who are here for one last hurrah — or perhaps more than that.
In that spirit, here are 30 players to watch at Wimbledon this year, 15 men and 15 women. Some of them are title contenders. Some of them are masters of the grass. And one of them is a certain seven-time singles champion named Serena Williams.
It’s almost time.
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Aryna Sabalenka arrives at the All England Club with some serious demons to exorcise.
Two of her four matches heading into Wimbledon have ended with a 6-0 loss in the deciding set, results that would be noteworthy for any world No. 1, but are exceptional given how dominant Sabalenka usually is. She lost 10 games in a row to end a disastrous French Open quarterfinal against Diana Shnaider on June 3, then fell 4-6, 7-6(4), 0-6 to world No. 4 Jessica Pegula on grass at the Berlin Tennis Open.
That isn’t exactly the type of confidence-building run Sabalenka, a hard-court savant, would want as another Grand Slam on a natural surface rounds into view. She has evolved her game the past two years by adding an impressive drop shot and sharpening her skills at net, but all that hard work hasn’t borne fruit away from asphalt — in fact, the Belarusian seems to be fraying lately.
At Wimbledon, her best shot for a title run may be finding a way to let go of expectations. It’s the only major tournament at which she hasn’t reached a final, and though she made the semifinals in 2021, 2023 and 2025, Sabalenka has proven vulnerable against elite players in southwest London. She’s 1-4 against top-10 players at Wimbledon.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
Best finish
SF (2021, 2023, 2025)
Rybakina is the 2022 Wimbledon champion. She has the purest serve in the game. She won the WTA Tour Finals late last year and the Australian Open early this one. She has risen to world No. 2, and looks just about the only player in with a shot of challenging Aryna Sabalenka for top spot. Only Sabalenka and Mirra Andreeva have won more rankings points than Rybakina in 2026.
But she’s also had a rough past month, losing in the second round of Roland Garros, her second match at Queen’s and in her opening match of the Berlin Tennis Open against Alexandra Eala (more on her later). Rybakina’s forehand has at times appeared erratic, and errors have come in match-turning bunches.
At last year’s Wimbledon, she went out in a surprise loss to Denmark’s Clara Tauson, who used her backhand slice to break Rybakina’s rhythm. But Rybakina has trophy pedigree at the All England Club, and her ominously serene tennis is always capable of rendering her opponents mere spectators to her brilliance.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
The defending women’s champion returns to the scene of her greatest triumph of the past couple of years.
During a turbulent spell, Świątek did last year what she thought she might never do and lifted the Wimbledon title. She lost only two games across the semifinal and final, double-bageling Amanda Anisimova in the latter.
Just as unlikely would have been Świątek going two years without a clay-court title since winning a fourth French Open crown in June 2024. But it’s been that kind of two years for her, in which she has tried to bring her game style back to the one of her earlier years, and to the one which saw her win Wimbledon: controlled, patient aggressiveness and masterful footwork and defense.
She achieved some of that with coach Wim Fissette, who was in her box for Wimbledon 2025, but in April she replaced him with Francisco Roig, a former key member of Rafael Nadal’s team.
Świątek has been going through the same tennis evolution at a seemingly faster rate with Roig, but her serve, a decisive weapon in last year’s Wimbledon triumph, has not let her keep control of enough matches.
The certainty of the two and a half years Świątek spent as an all-conquering world No. 1 has gone, but her pedigree as a six-time Grand Slam champion means she remains a tournament favorite.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
Jessica Pegula has too steady of a disposition, and has been in the game for too long, to get carried away by a few good matches heading into a major tournament.
But if ever there were a year for Pegula to feel confident about her Wimbledon chances, this is it. One of tennis’s most stalwart players has had a stellar 2026, having made a deep run at nearly every tournament she’s played, a first-round loss at the French Open notwithstanding.
She also handed a 6-4, 6-7(4), 6-0 loss to world No. 1 Sabalenka on grass in the semifinals of the stacked Berlin Tennis Open, before falling to Linda Nosková in the final.
Her run in Germany was a reminder of why Pegula is so dangerous on speedy grass — her flat hitting and deep ball make it easy for her to rush opponents, and she has the touch and reflexes to deal with such a slick surface. She has also made her serve more powerful and precise.
Yet Pegula hasn’t found success at Wimbledon. Her best result was a quarterfinal run in 2023. She followed that with a second-round exit in 2024 and lost in the first round in 2025.
She’s determined to fix that this year with a schedule adjustment. Instead of playing a tune-up tournament the week before Wimbledon, she’s headed straight to the All England Club to give herself more time to acclimate to Wimbledon’s grass courts, which play slower at the start of the tournament than the German grass on which she excels. She won a grass-court title in Bad Homburg, Germany, last year and won the title in Berlin in 2024. Now she wants it in London.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
Mirra Andreeva aced a big test at the French Open — not just by winning her first Grand Slam title, but by handling herself with aplomb as she entered the semifinals as the only top-10 player remaining in the draw. Andreeva is just 19, and has a history of emotional explosions on court, many of which had resulted in losses to lower-ranked players.
But as the frontrunner at Roland Garros, Andreeva shone, fulfilling a fate that felt years in the making after announcing herself as a legitimate threat on tour as a 15-year-old.
What Andreeva does next has potential to shake up the top tier of women’s tennis. With Sabalenka stumbling in her past two tournaments, Rybakina struggling with a recent hip issue and her forehand, Świątek still sorting out her serve and Coco Gauff’s relative unease with grass, Wimbledon, always open on the women’s side in recent years, feels even more so.
Andreeva has the power, big serve and variety necessary to contend on grass. If she does make a deep run at Wimbledon, fans could be looking at the very beginning of a new chapter in women’s tennis — one in which Andreeva is a main character.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
One can only imagine the emotions Anisimova will be feeling as she returns to the All England Club. It was here last year that the now 24-year-old American reached her first Grand Slam final, only to lose to Świątek, 6-0, 6-0.
Anisimova’s response to that humiliation has been exemplary, beating Świątek seven weeks later at the U.S. Open en route to another major final, and eventually climbing to a career-high ranking of No. 3 in January.
Since then, she’s had a tougher time. After a quarterfinal loss to Pegula at the Australian Open, Anisimova has been managing a wrist injury that kept her out of almost the entire clay-court season.
Her main concern going into Wimbledon is less about emotional baggage, and more about how her body will hold up. One of the cleanest ball-strikers on the tour, especially on the backhand side, Anisimova can overwhelm anyone on her day.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
In 2019, a 15-year-old Cori Gauff beat one of her tennis idols, Venus Williams, in the first round at Wimbledon. Gauff went all the way to the last 16 that year, and her run appeared to make her a sure bet to win the title at the All England Club one day.
Seven years later, Cori now goes by Coco, Venus is still playing at 46 and Gauff’s chances of sustained success on the grass may have never looked more remote. She is still just 22, so she has the time to adapt — just as Świątek did — but her recent form does not augur well for this year’s edition in southwest London.
Gauff has lost in the first round in two of the past three years at Wimbledon, and has not won a match on grass at all since the 2024 tournament here.
Her serve, which used to lose her lots of points to double faults, is now much more reliable, and when it is working, it is one of the most potent grass-court weapons in the women’s game. But it’s Gauff’s forehand, which she likes to hit from deep and with time and height, that is her biggest obstacle to doing well at Wimbledon.
The ball comes in low and quick and puts her on the back foot, and that stops her from stepping in confidently to take control of points, as any player who wants to win on grass needs to do.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
Best finish
R16 (2019, 2024)
Last year’s Wimbledon was one of the high points in Bencic’s hugely impressive return to tennis following the birth of her daughter, Bella, in April 2024.
p>Bencic reached the semifinals, taking out top-20 seeds Andreeva and Ekaterina Alexandrova along the way. The run helped her return to the world’s top 10 by January, a huge achievement so soon after returning from maternity leave in October 2024.
Bencic, Olympic champion in 2021, has had solid rather than spectacular results this year, and earlier this month she missed Queen’s, the Wimbledon warm-up event, with an ankle injury. She hasn’t played since, meaning she’ll head to SW19 with no grass-court matches under her belt.
It would be a big ask for her to repeat last year’s heroics, but then, no one was expecting her to hit the ground running like she did there when her comeback was just beginning.
“I’m really confident about getting back to where I was and even better,” Bencic said during an interview at that time. She’s already made good on that optimism.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
Jović, who is just 18, is creative and dangerous on any surface. But if Świątek’s success is anything to go by, Jović’s brand of patient, controlled, win-a-point-by-several-cuts aggressiveness should translate well to grass.
The teenager has shot up the rankings on the back of impressive wins against top-20 opposition, and while she is yet to claim a statement upset, Jović appears on the verge of joining Gauff, Anisimova, Pegula and the other top American women as a serious candidate for deep runs in big tournaments.
For this Wimbledon, the only real question mark is injury. Jović hurt an ankle at Queen’s, where she looked to be in ominous form, and has not played since. Even if she can get to the start line at Wimbledon, going deep this year may be too big an ask.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
Madison Keys has been there and done it. She is a major champion, the winner of the 2025 Australian Open, when she blasted Sabalenka off the court in the final.
Keys should be able to take advantage of the grass because of her powerful game and flat groundstrokes.
Despite both these truths, Keys has never been able to conjure her best tennis at Wimbledon. It is the only Grand Slam where the American hasn’t reached the semifinals, and she’s reached the quarterfinals just twice in, 2015 and 2023. There was a bit of bad luck in there — Keys was a game away from beating 2024 finalist Jasmine Paolini in the fourth round when she injured her left leg and had to retire from the match shortly afterward.
All of this makes Keys a bit of a wild card in the draw: hypothetically dangerous but not quite fearsome as an opponent.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
Best finish
QF (2015, 2023)
The 21-year-old from the Philippines, whose fans have queued around corners to watch her wherever she plays, doesn’t look like a grass-court threat.
She doesn’t have a dangerous serve. She doesn’t finish points at the net that much — at least not yet. But Eala’s win percentage on grass is her best by surface by a distance, and one result on it before she became a known quantity has proven symbolic.
At Wimbledon 2024, she lost in the final round of qualifying to Lulu Sun — the New Zealander who went on to reach the quarterfinals. In 2025, she made the final of the Eastbourne Open, a historic warm-up event. And this year, she has beaten Queen’s champion Donna Vekić, 2022 Wimbledon champion Rybakina and top-10 player Elina Svitolina. Those are three proper grass-court wins.
So how does she do it? For one, Eala is a lefty. A slice serve in the ad court off a lefty’s racket can be very unpleasant to manage. She is very aggressive against weak serves, which can become invitations to tee off on grass. And she also possesses a kind of fearlessness that allows her to lose points and games while still believing she can finish the match on top. That’s helpful anywhere, but especially on grass, where matches can be messy and everyone makes errors.
The Filipino faithful pretty much always finds a way to the courts where Eala is playing. She will be seeded. She could be ready for some more of those statement wins.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
One of the tour’s most natural and confident players on grass, Raducanu’s low, skidding groundstrokes and wide, angled serves are rarely more effective than on Wimbledon’s lawns.
As a British player, Raducanu had more exposure to the surface at a young age than most, and it was at Wimbledon five years ago that she reached the fourth round at just 18. A couple of months later, she won the U.S. Open as a qualifier.
A lot has happened since, but she now sits at a solid ranking of world No. 32 and will be seeded for Wimbledon. At her only grass-court warm-up event, Raducanu reached the Queen’s final, before running out of steam against an inspired Vekić.
Raducanu recently reunited with Andrew Richardson, her coach during that fairytale success at Flushing Meadows, and appears to be playing with the kind of aggressiveness and freedom she said she was lacking earlier in the year.
With a team that fits her and a partisan home crowd, Raducanu will be looking to go beyond the last-16 stage she has twice reached before in southwest London.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
Best finish
R16 (2021, 2024)
To watch a Vekić match is to experience what seems like the full range of human emotion in 90 minutes. They often aren’t straightforward, the quality of her performance isn’t usually linear and she wears every feeling she experiences throughout the soaring highs and dismal lows plastered like a billboard on her face. Afterwards, she usually cracks a wry joke about the whole ordeal.
If Vekić’s humor and self-depreciation comes off as endearing, so too is her determination throughout a career that kicked into gear in 2014, when she won her first WTA title as a 17-year-old, and peaked at the 2024 Paris Olympics, when she won the silver medal on the red clay of Roland Garros.
In between, Vekić’s big hitting and exceptionally powerful, if unreliable, serve took her to two Grand Slam quarterfinals in 2019 and 2013, before she finally reached a semifinal in her 43rd appearance at a major tournament, at Wimbledon in 2024. She was two points away from the final — and in tears much of the time due to injury.
She arrives at the year’s third Grand Slam with momentum, having defeated 2021 U.S. Open champion Raducanu to win Queen’s, the prestigious grass-court tournament that precedes Wimbledon, for the biggest title of her career.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
A former Wimbledon champion. An unseeded player. Krejčíková is an opponent everybody will be hoping to avoid in Friday’s draw.
Also a former French Open champ and a 10-time doubles-and-mixed-doubles major winner, Krejčíková has a game that works beautifully on grass. She can volley, hit with slice and spin, and her serve is a real weapon.
Krejčíková offered a reminder of those skills in reaching the final of the Rosmalen Grass Court Championships in the Netherlands a couple of weeks ago, before having to pull out of that match because of illness.
Someone who often goes under the radar, Krejčíková would relish the role of giant-killer and, if she’s healthy, would appear to be coming into form at just the right time.
At No. 37, Krejčíková is about the same ranking as she was when winning Wimbledon two years ago (No. 32). In what could be a hugely unpredictable women’s tournament, she must be considered a dark horse.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
The biggest story going into this year’s Wimbledon? The return of Serena Williams.
Almost four years after her most recent competitive singles match, the 23-time Grand Slam champion is back at the tournament where she is a seven-time champion after receiving a wild card into both the singles and the doubles.
There are so many sub-plots. Who will she draw in the first round? What will her level be? What is she really expecting from this tournament, given she hasn’t played any singles matches in the lead-up?
Williams, 44, has spoken about having nothing to lose in coming back, and the desire for her children to see her play, but it is hard to imagine the greatest women’s player of all time accepting just being competitive in matches.
Her first-round match at the All England Club is her first singles outing back, and while her pair of doubles appearances on grass saw her serve and aura undiminished, the step up in movement required for singles is considerable.
Whatever happens over the next week or so will be fascinating.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
Best finish
W (2002, 2003, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2016)
Sinner is the defending men’s champion and a huge favorite. His main rival, Carlos Alcaraz, is sidelined with a wrist injury. He beat Novak Djokovic on the Wimbledon grass, which is probably Djokovic’s best surface now, in straight sets last year, though his opponent was hampered by a hip injury.
But Sinner was also a huge favorite at the recent French Open, where he lost to then-world No. 56 Juan Manuel Cerúndolo having been four points from victory, thanks to a combination of illness and the 90-degree Paris heat.
Temperatures are expected to be more moderate in London, but the loss — and Sinner’s last-16 match against Grigor Dimitrov a year ago, when he was two sets down before the Bulgarian had to retire due to injury — shows just how little pre-tournament status can mean in practice. By the same token, Sinner’s devastatingly precise tennis is capable of rendering any concern moot with a few swishes of his racket.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
After winning his first Grand Slam title at the French Open, Alexander Zverev arrives at Wimbledon with a weight lifted from his shoulders.
Wimbledon is by far his least successful major. A champion or runner-up at all of the other three, Zverev has never even reached a quarterfinal at the All England Club. Last year, after a first-round exit to France’s Arthur Rinderknech, Zverev said in a news conference that he felt “empty” and was “lacking joy in everything that I do.”
The low-bouncing grass courts of Wimbledon have never really suited him. Zverev, the world No. 3, is best when he has time to stand back and take big swings, especially with his backhand. Roland Garros is ideal for this, but grass, which rewards more aggressive play tighter to the baseline, not so much.
That said, Zverev possesses a huge serve and is trying to play more offensively, so maybe this will be the year he finally has a run in southwest London.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
Best finish
R16 (2017, 2021, 2024)
Shelton has one of the tools that players need to succeed on grass: A top serve. His is so dangerous that it should give him a huge advantage on the surface, and often, it does.
But if Shelton hopes to fulfill his promise on grass, he has to deal with the serves that are coming at him more effectively. He also needs to manage the points that don’t need his most freewheeling skills — the regular ones.
The left-handed American’s speed and resilience mean that he can recover points that appear lost, and his athleticism allows him to come up with some miracle bail-out shots that win him some points he should lose, but he ends up having to produce too many of those low-percentage miracles.
Shelton also struggles to break serve, which is mostly OK on grass, because he is tougher to break than just about anyone. But that combination leads to winning a lot of sets through tiebreaks, instead of by breaking serve for a cushion on the scoreboard. That leaves him in a whole lot of high-variance situations, and over a five-set Grand Slam, that is not the most sustainable path to success.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
Alex de Minaur is the classic perennial top-10 player. Polished, genial and consistent, the 27-year-old Aussie more often than not wins the matches he should yet bumps up against a ceiling in today’s men’s tennis landscape.
He’s reached the quarterfinal stage in six of the last nine Grand Slam tournaments he’s played, but hasn’t advanced in a single one (he withdrew with a hip injury before getting to contest one such match, at Wimbledon in 2024). Since making his top-10 debut in early 2024, he has a 1-8 record against top-five players.
That type of record should make de Minaur one of the contenders most eager to take advantage of the opportunity of Alcaraz’s absence due to injury. A relentless baseliner who can exhaust opponents with his speed and defense, de Minaur is solid on grass; he’s lost just five of 20 matches on the surface in the past two years.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
Taylor Fritz tends to shine in the European summer, when the grass turns his cracking serve into a lethal weapon.
He arrives back on his turf after a rough few months. Knee tendinitis cropped up late last year and he began 2026 having ceded his status as the top-ranked American man, a spot he’d occupied for the better part of the past five years, to Shelton. His team then convinced him to take a two-month layoff to rehab his injury, but the time away meant Fritz missed most of the clay-court season.
It wasn’t ideal for Fritz’s confidence, but it was optimal for his grass-court preparation. He hits SW19 recharged and ready, and having made the finals in both grass-court events he entered in the weeks preceding Wimbledon. Then, he pulled out of the Eastbourne Open, in a bid to manage his body for this tournament.
Fritz finally broke through to the semifinals last year after heartbreaking five-set losses in the quarterfinals in 2022 and 2024. And the final four should be the bar now for a player who has the game — and the experience, having reached the final of the U.S. Open in 2024 — to win a Wimbledon title.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
The greatest male player in history surely spies an opportunity to win the 25th Grand Slam title of his career.
With no Alcaraz, one of the two main blockers to Djokovic winning an eighth Wimbledon is out of the way. Djokovic fell to João Fonseca at the French Open last month, but over the past couple of years, it’s generally been one of Alcaraz or Sinner who has stopped his pursuit of glory at majors. Now Alcaraz is absent, and Sinner’s sheen of invincibility is less glossy after his painful defeat to Cerúndolo at Roland Garros.
Djokovic has seven times as many Wimbledon titles as the rest of the men’s field combined, and he has long mastered the surface and its idiosyncrasies. No one on the tour moves on grass like him, and no one employs the same kind of variety — the main question is whether his 39-year-old body can live with the rigors of seven best-of-five set matches over a fortnight.
If he needs any kind of physical boost, Djokovic knows he might never get a better shot at No. 25.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
Best finish
W (2011, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022)
Another Grand Slam arrives, and another mystery begins for Daniil Medvedev.
When Medvedev is on, his particular brand of slow-torture tennis, which grinds down opponents with a steady drumbeat of improbable groundstrokes peppered with the occasional laserbeam serve, is one of the few that is has any effect on world No. 1 Sinner. Medvedev has put together quite a solid season behind some seriously potent tennis, reaching the round of 16 at the Australian Open, winning the title at the Dubai Open, making the final of the BNP Paribas Open and the semifinals of the Italian Open.
But don’t look to Medvedev’s recent past for any hints about the future. All that good work in the first third of the year led to yet another first-round loss at the French Open, which was also the fourth opening-round exit in Medvedev’s past six major tournaments. He doesn’t have a ton of continuity at Wimbledon, either — the Russian made the semifinals in 2023 and 2024, before losing in the first round last year.
His experience and undeniable talent always make Medvedev a threat. But whether he’s quite as desperate as some other Wimbledon contenders to take advantage of yet another Grand Slam without Alcaraz is in question.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
Best finish
SF (2023, 2024)
Imagine someone with Alcaraz’s approach to the game, but without the shot-selection skills.
Flavio Cobolli, the world No. 10, is not as talented as Alcaraz but he shares a love for the spectacular and has a similarly wide range of shots in his arsenal. The pair trained together before the 2024 season, but Cobolli has forged his own path since.
At 24, he comes into Wimbledon having just finished as runner-up at the French Open, his first Grand Slam final. He was a set away from becoming a major champion, but ultimately faded against Zverev and lost in five sets.
Grass wasn’t assumed to be a natural surface for Cobolli, who, like many Italians, generally prefers clay, but he reached the Wimbledon quarterfinals last year and gave Djokovic a scare before eventually succumbing.
An engaging personality who can hit outrageous winners, Cobolli is establishing himself as a major player on the ATP Tour.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
Lehečka has a smooth, easy game, with a big serve, sweet touch and a bang-on forehand that make him look troublesome on grass. He took Alcaraz to three sets during last year’s final at Queen’s, only losing after the Spaniard found the kind of level that sees him beat just about anyone.
Lehečka also has notable wins on the surface over the likes of de Minaur, Tommy Paul, Jack Draper and Frances Tiafoe, all of whom fancy themselves as more than useful on the lawns. He nearly beat Shelton in the semifinals at the recent Stuttgart Open, a warm-up for Wimbledon, in which the American won two of the three tiebreak coin-flips.
Away from grass, Lehečka hit a high water mark in March, when he reached the final of the Miami Open, an ATP Masters 1000 event, and fell to Sinner. If he can find solidity to go with his grass gifts, he has a chance for a decent run at SW19.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
Wimbledon needs Arthur Fils, and not just for his luminous, all-out attack tennis. The Frenchman is one of the most exciting young men’s players in tennis, but since last year’s French Open, the sport has seen him all-too infrequently.
After recovering from a back problem, and producing a sparkling start to 2026 away from the majors, Fils ran into another injury just ahead of this year’s French Open, and was forced to withdraw. He has trained at the All England Club and looks set to make a return on the grass, which allows him to exhibit his full range of movement and devastating hitting.
Given his lack of match rhythm, a truly deep run looks unlikely, but just having Fils competing again will be a major boost to the ATP Tour.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
The best results of Paul’s Grand Slam career have come on hard courts, where his versatile game sparkles. It’s a delight to watch him on clay, where his athleticism and stamina lead to jaw-dropping points. But don’t overlook Paul on grass, where the American’s speed and touch make him a strong contender.
Paul’s proclivity for a slugfest might seem antithetical to potent grass-court tennis, but the American has the variety and excellent feel around the court to cause damage in the draw. He reached the quarterfinals in 2024 before running into the Alcaraz buzzsaw and after a dip last year — he lost in the second round — he should be poised for a deep run based on the season he’s putting together.
Paul has faced his fair share of heartbreak this year that could serve as motivation, too. He let four match points slip by in a Miami Open quarterfinal loss to Fils in one of the best matches of the year, gave up a two-set lead against Casper Ruud at the French Open and lost in three other finals. All consequential losses, yes, but that also means Paul is putting himself in the mix consistently. He owns the third-most tour level wins of any player this year, trailing only Sinner and Zverev.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
Despite being a 2022 Wimbledon semifinalist and world No. 8, Norrie is perennially underrated. A model of consistency, he is often overlooked even by British fans, and yet invariably he is their last man (or woman) standing at a Grand Slam.
Last year, Jack Draper, then world No. 4 and achieving the kind of results not seen by a British player since Andy Murray, went out in the second round. Norrie made his way to the quarterfinals, eventually losing to Alcaraz.
He will back himself for a similar run this year. The difference in trajectory between his heavy, looping forehand and flat, skidding backhand causes opponents all kinds of headaches, and the left-hander is one of the fittest players on the tour.
Normally scheduled on No. 1 Court, Norrie will run all day and is a nightmare to try to put away, especially at a venue where he can count on noisy home support.
Draper and Raducanu will receive more attention, but there’s every chance that the last British player standing at Wimbledon 2026 will again be the understated Norrie.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
Before there was Sinner, before there was Paolini, there was Matteo Berrettini, who once upon a time was the most exciting of the swell of promising players who began pouring out of Italy a little under a decade ago.
Standing at 6 feet 5 inches, Berrettini wielded a booming serve and sandbag-heavy forehand as his primary weapons en route to becoming Wimbledon’s first singles finalist from Italy in 2021. A semifinal appearance in the 2019 U.S. Open hinted at his potential, and he spent the next couple of years collecting a smattering of ATP titles before making the quarterfinals in five of the six Grand Slam tournaments he played in 2021 and 2022, developing a capable backhand slice along the way.
But for all Berrettini’s soaring promise, his career in the past few years has mostly been defined by injury. The 30-year-old hasn’t enjoyed a season of full health in five years, and his grand return to the French Open in May after a five-year absence was cut short when he had to retire from his quarterfinal match against compatriot Matteo Arnaldi with a hip injury.
If Berrettini emerges on grass healthy, he should be considered dangerous. But a deep run would be a tall task for someone who hasn’t made it past the fourth round since 2021.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
Mpetshi Perricard is unlikely to threaten a title tilt at Wimbledon, but he is the player no one wants to see next to their name in the draw, whether in round one or in the first couple if he makes it through.
The Frenchman, all of 6 feet 8 inches tall, has a serve that is ridiculous on clay and completely absurd on grass. For most players, the only way to beat him is to win some tiebreaks, but returners who have mastered the chip and block, which absorb the power and send the ball skidding back to the front of the court, can give him serious problems.
In 2024, he made his first Wimbledon appearance as a lucky loser and took out Sebastian Korda of the U.S., the No. 20 seed, in the first round. At the same stage last year, he took Fritz to five sets, during which he hit the fastest serve (153 mph) in tournament history, yet lost that point. That about sums him up: he may not go deep, but he can topple anyone, even the very best, if they do not have their wits about them early.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
This time a year ago, Draper was among the favourites to win Wimbledon. Twelve months on, he’s not even in the world’s top 100.
Injuries have once again bedevilled a player who, at 24, should be about to enter his prime. First, a bone bruise in his left (playing) arm kept him out from August until February, before a knee issue took him out from April until this month.
The owner of a huge serve and rock-solid backhand, as well as impressive touch and feel, Draper should have the game to thrive on grass. He has enjoyed good results on the surface, winning his first ATP Tour title at the Stuttgart Open two years ago and then defeating Alcaraz at Queen’s a few days later, before making the semifinals there last year.
But he has never gone beyond the second round at Wimbledon, and after a shock exit to Marin Čilić a year ago, he said he had to make major improvements if he wanted to thrive on the surface.
To address his lack of Wimbledon success, Draper has brought two-time SW19 champion Murray onto his coaching team. Murray’s experience should help, but what Draper really needs is a clean bill of health.
Wimbledon CV
Wimbledon career win-loss record and appearances include main-draw matches only
Best finish
R64 (2022, 2024, 2025)
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