{"id":659239,"date":"2026-06-26T11:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T11:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/659239\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T11:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T11:50:10","slug":"wimbledon-2026-draw-serena-williams-to-face-maya-joint-in-first-round-while-jack-draper-plays-taylor-fritz-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/659239\/","title":{"rendered":"Wimbledon 2026 draw: Serena Williams to face Maya Joint in first round, while Jack Draper plays Taylor Fritz"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">American superstar Serena Williams will make her highly-anticipated singles comeback at Wimbledon against Australian world number 53 Maya Joint in the first round.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Williams, who is a seven-time women&#8217;s champion at the All England Club, has been given a wildcard to restart her singles career at the age of 44, having not played competitively since the US Open in 2022.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Joint, 20, lost in the first round on her Wimbledon main-draw debut last year and has won just one of her past 14 matches.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">British number one Emma Raducanu, seeded 30th, is set to start against Croatia&#8217;s Antonia Ruzic, but there are concerns over her fitness after she did not practise on Thursday because of a shin injury.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Raducanu could face top seed Aryna Sabalenka in the third round &#8211; just as she did at Wimbledon last year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In the men&#8217;s draw, Britain&#8217;s Jack Draper has been handed a tough first-round match against American sixth seed Taylor Fritz.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Draper is continuing his return after a catalogue of injury problems &#8211; with Andy Murray now in his coaching team &#8211; and has reached the Eastbourne semi-finals in his first tournament since April.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"American superstar Serena Williams will make her highly-anticipated singles comeback at Wimbledon against Australian world number 53 Maya&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-659239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}