Wimbledon recap: Grand Slam record as seeds fall across the draws

New York Times

a day ago

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Welcome to the Wimbledon briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories on each day of the tournament.
On day two, a series of upsets set records, a champion waved goodbye to Wimbledon, and a French Open star took full advantage of her opportunity as a lucky loser.
Coco Gauff announced herself at Wimbledon. When she beat Venus Williams aged 15 in 2019, it looked like the tournament would become home turf.
Instead, it has become her toughest tennis test. The second seed went out in the first round for the second time in three years, losing to the dangerous Dayana Yastremska of Ukraine.
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Yastremska magnified and punished Gauff's weaknesses on grass, rushing her shots and pouncing on her serves. Speaking after the defeat, Gauff said she needed more matches. She drew a tough opponent and couldn't adjust in time.
She isn't the only one. 13 men's seeds and 10 women's seeds have gone out in the first round at Wimbledon this year. 13 is a Grand Slam record on the men's side, matching the 2004 Australian Open, while the women's draw is now missing its No. 2 and No. 3 seeds after Jessica Pegula lost in straight sets to an inspired performance from world No. 116 Elisabetta Cocciaretto.
Olympic gold medalist Zheng Qinwen, the No. 5 seed, lost in the first round for the second year in a row, going down to Kateřina Siniaková.
No. 3 seed Alexander Zverev was the highest-ranked men's casualty, going out in five sets to Arthur Rinderknech of France. Just a few of the others include:
James Hansen
Two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitová said a fond farewell to the All England Club on Tuesday, bowing out with a straight-sets defeat to No. 10 seed Emma Navarro.
Kvitová, 35, won the title in 2011 and 2014, and reached a career high of world No. 2. She also lost in the final of the 2019 Australian Open, a match that had she won would have seen her claim the No. 1 ranking. Perhaps it's fitting though that she never attained that ranking, given how she could veer from unbeatable to unpredictable with seemingly little rhyme or reason. She said in a news conference Saturday that both of those extremes were a part of who she was as a tennis player, laughing at some of the wild fluctuations.
It was fighting spirit coupled with a kind nature off the court that made Kvitová such a popular champion. After an intruder attacked her with a knife at her home in 2016, Kvitová needed an emergency operation to repair damage to her left, playing hand. She feared she would never play again.
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She defied expectations to return just five months later, and Wimbledon will always define her career. She didn't just win two titles, it was also on Centre Court that she got engaged, and after a final match on No. 1 Court, she said:
'I will miss Wimbledon, I will miss tennis, I will miss you fans – but I am ready for the next chapter of life as well.'
Wimbledon will miss her too.
Charlie Eccleshare
How should a player prepare for Wimbledon? Do not, repeat, do not, win a grass event in the lead-up.
On the women's side, the champions in Bad Homburg (Pegula), Nottingham (McCartney Kessler), Eastbourne (Maya Joint) and at the HSBC Championships (Tatjana Maria) have all exited in the first round. The supposed good form on this specialized surface? A mirage. Ditto for Alexander Bublik, the winner of the Halle Open last month, who lost to Spain's Jaume Munar having served for the match. Even Carlos Alcaraz, the winner of the men's HSBC Championships and the two-time defending Wimbledon champion, nearly succumbed to the warm-up event winner's curse when he squeezed past Fabio Fognini in five sets in the first round Monday.
'I should just play no tournaments, get no wins, then roll into Wimbledon, and maybe I'll have better results,' Pegula said, laughing, when asked whether she'd change her preparations next year.
Pegula couldn't really explain the sudden switch in fortunes, other than to cite the unpredictability of the surface. 'It's so hard with the grass,' she said in a news conference. 'You want reps on the grass. I mean, I can't take away that last week I had some really good wins. I came in here, and I feel like maybe if her level could have dropped, I would have been able to fight through that match.
'Who knows, maybe that would have gotten me through, and I would be in the second week, and that would have been a pivotal match for me. That's not what happened.'
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On the flipside, a beaming Ben Shelton said after beating Alex Bolt that he'd played 'like crap' in his back-to-back defeats in the lead-up to Wimbledon. Clearly that's the secret to avoiding an early exit.
Charlie Eccleshare
But for the randomness of Wimbledon's cutoff date, Victoria Mboko would have made the main draw.
The 18-year-old Canadian has had an astonishing year. After tearing through the tennis minor leagues, she qualified for the French Open and made the third round.
That put her inside the top 100, but not in time to escape having to qualify for Wimbledon. Mboko won two matches in London, but lost the third that would have seen her in the first round.
She stuck around just in case a couple of players pulled out, and around 1 p.m. on Tuesday, while she was eating some pasta, she got word that she was in. She was ready to play in a few hours. But then her match got moved earlier.
Tennis players are creatures of routine. They have certain prep. They aren't great at rolling with it. And then they have to, like Mboko did at Wimbledon. First main draw match on the hallowed grass, against a seed. All she had time to do was the thing that she's been doing since she was a little girl. She put some Drake in her headphones – he's from Toronto like she is – and hit the court.
No prep, no problem. Mboko cruised to a 6-3, 6-2 win over Magdalena Fręch today. Don't count out the young Canadian.
'I wanted to put myself in more tournament mode, but I really couldn't,' she said after the win.
Mboko has a big serve and lots of shots. She has flat power that should work very well on grass. But that's not how she's thinking about it.
'Tennis is tennis,' she said.
'You gotta do what you gotta do to win and no matter what the surface is. You have to bring out what you're good at to help you win the game any ways.'
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Mboko is quickly showing the world, there's a lot she's very good at. No matter what the surface is, or where she is playing, or how much advance warning she has.
Matt Futterman
Emma Raducanu vs. Markéta Vondroušová
Taylor Fritz (5) vs. Gabriel Diallo
Tell us what you noticed on the second day…
(Top photo of Jessica Pegula: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic)