Wimbledon recap: Grand Slam champions hold firm as tournament sets seed record

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Welcome to the Wimbledon briefing, where will explain the stories behind the stories on each day of the tournament.
On day four, the upsets continued and the tournament's most famous bird did his job.
Surprise: there were more upsets at Wimbledon
The upset train may have slowed down slightly on Thursday, with the players with pedigree and the small numbers next to their names doing just fine, but it rolled, nevertheless. Jack Draper also found it too fast for his liking.
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If any tennis draw enthusiasts had August Holmgren, the 27-year-old world No. 192, in their third-round bracket, then kudos to them. Holmgren had to save three match points in qualifying just to get to the main draw. On Thursday he beat Tomáš Macháč of the Czech Republic, the No. 20 seed who has top-10 talent.
Ask anyone on the men's tour about him and they will get a certain look in their eyes about what he is capable of. That's a pretty serious upset, especially at Wimbledon, for a player who had never won a main-draw match before this tournament. Holmgren took a fifth-set tiebreak to decide it, 7-6(5), 6-7(8), 6-7(5), 7-5, 7-6(5).
He studied drama in college, and he showed what he had learned with the match on the line, when he threw caution to the wind.
Heading into the tiebreak, he told himself to 'hit harder. Brute force.'
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He hit a 140 mph serve and looked at his coached and yelled about how much he had left in his tank. 'He's not thinking about any of the stuff around him or where he is or anything,' said Ryan Heckley, Holmgren's former coach at the University of San Diego, said afterward.
Holmgren's parents then wandered by with empty champagne glasses.
'Unbelivable,' his father, Allan, said.
He didn't need to say more, about his big-serve-big-forehand son or about the tournament in general.
Need some names and seeds who exited today? Draper, No. 4. Sofia Kenin, No. 28. Tommy Paul, No. 10. Felix Auger-Aliassime, No. 25. It confirms that Wimbledon 2025 has the fewest seeds of any Grand Slam since the 32-seeds-per-draw format was adopted in 2001.
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What is going on? Before this publication offers some explanations Friday, here's what some players think. Emma Navarro said players are getting a little tired, and tennis is very deep these days. Madison Keys said players see in the locker room what is happening and start to think the upset bug might bite them. Iga Świątek thinks grass is a challenge to stay in on, but she did just fine. So did Jannik Sinner. There may be few seeds left, but plenty of Grand Slam champions.
It's all a bit weird. The most specialized surface in the game certainly doesn't help. But will it continue? The remaining seeds, including Sinner, Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz, Aryna Sabalenka and Świątek, sure hope it won't.
Wimbledon's fastest security guard strikes again
Donna Davis and her Harris hawk, Rufus, have been chasing pigeons at Wimbledon since 1999. They arrive at 4 a.m. and spend five hours walking — or flying — around the 18 grass courts.
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'I let him go to fly around, underneath the roof and the rafters,' Davis tells The Athletic from Centre Court as Rufus soars towards the roof. 'If any pigeons have gone in overnight, he shoes them out.'
The 58-year-old describes her work as 'magical.' On site, Rufus is as famous as those playing on the grass or sitting in the Royal Box. It can take Davis an hour to walk through the crowd with him because of how popular he is.
Having visited Wimbledon for 26 years, Davis most fondly remembers Andy Murray's two wins. On the morning before both of his titles in 2013 and 2016, Rufus, now 17, cleared the area of pigeons, just as he will do again for the finals this year.
'He is scaring everything off but the other way to look at it is: He is looking for a mate but nobody wants to be friends with him,' Davis said.
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Rufus sees her as one of his pack, Davis said, because he knows she's his easiest food source. But being part of Rufus' pack has downsides. Davis was nearly attacked by a murder of crows here two years ago before Rufus swooped in to the rescue.
'They associate me as an extension of this hawk. It was like the (Alfred) Hitchcock film (Birds). It was this black cloud coming down and Rufus went through and scattered them. He's got my back,' she smiles.
Other notable results on day four
Iga Świątek (8) lost the first set to Caty McNally of the U.S. 7-5, but never really looked in trouble. Świątek dominated the opening set, before McNally raised her level and something familiar happened: Świątek started playing with the all-out aggression she is trying to use more judiciously in her game. She had done just that to go up 4-1, and did it again in the second and third sets to win 5-7, 6-2, 6-1.
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Jan-Lennard Struff defeated Felix Auger-Aliassime (25) in a match held over from the previous day. Struff won a tiebreak 11-9 to go into Thursday on level pegging rather than down 2-0, and used his serving prowess and directness to send the Canadian out of the tournament, 3-6, 7-6(9), 6-3, 6-4. Struff's win sets up another Wimbledon encounter with Alcaraz: they played a five-set thriller under the roof in 2022, but Struff may need more bad weather to stand a chance this time.
Zeynep Sönmez became the first Turkish woman to reach the third round of a major in the Open Era, after beating Wang Xinyu 7-5, 7-5.
And Jannik Sinner (1) continued his serene progress, beating Aleksandar Vukic of Australia 6-1, 6-1, 6-3.
Day four matches you should actually watch
🎾 Men's singles: Nicolás Jarry vs. Joāo Fonseca
9 a.m. ET on ESPN/ESPN+
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Fonseca has all the ingredients to be the next star in men's tennis, including an adoring Brazilian public. But he'll meet their match in the Chilean contingent supporting Jarry, who has a rocket serve and can take a racket out of any player's hands on grass.
🎾 Women's singles: Aryna Sabalenka (1) vs. Emma Raducanu
12 p.m. ET on ESPN/ESPN+
Sabalenka has looked largely untroubled amid the chaos of the first week, but Raducanu is in her best form in ages and has the home crowd behind her. Last on Centre Court will be a tough place to be for the world No. 1.
Wimbledon men's draw 2025
Wimbledon women's draw 2025
Tell us what you noticed on the fourth day…
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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