‘One of my biggest inspirations’ – Draper thanks Murray for joining coaching team <\/p>\n
Video credit: SNTV<\/p>\n
Williams<\/a>, 44, is competing in singles for the first time since the 2022 US Open, having recently made a shock return to the court in doubles.On her last Wimbledon<\/a> appearance four years ago, she was beaten in the first round by Harmony Tan, but she appears to have a winnable opener against Joint, who has lost 13 of her last 14 matches on tour.<\/p>\n If Williams beats Joint and Eala, she could face defending champion Iga Swiatek in the third round.<\/p>\n British No. 1 Emma Raducanu<\/a>, who missed training on Thursday due to a reported injury concern<\/a>, will face world No. 60 Antonia Ruzic in the first round.<\/p>\n Raducanu could meet former French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko or fellow Brit Harriet Dart in the second round, followed by world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka in the third round.<\/p>\n Sabalenka beat Raducanu at the same stage of the Grand Slam last year.<\/p>\n Swiatek starts her title defence against Taylor Townsend and could meet former world No. 1 Karolina Pliskova in the second round.<\/p>\n Top seed Sabalenka opens against Teodora Kostovic and has been drawn on the same half as fourth seed Jessica Pegula.<\/p>\n Britain’s Katie Boulter starts against 18-year-old Tyra Grant.<\/p>\n Draper handed tough opener<\/p>\n Jack Draper will face world No. 7 Taylor Fritz in his first-round match at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n Draper, who is being coached by Andy Murray during the grass season, made his return from injury this week at Eastbourne<\/a>.<\/p>\n If Draper beats Fritz, he would face another American, either Patrick Kypson or Mackenzie McDonald, in the second round.<\/p>\n Seven-time champion Novak Djokovic starts against world No. 99 Wu Yibing. <\/p>\n Djokovic, who is bidding to win a record 25th Grand Slam title, could face Stefanos Tsitsipas in the second round, and is on the same half of the draw as world No. 1 Jannik Sinner.<\/p>\n Defending champion Sinner starts against Miomir Kecmanovic in the first round.<\/p>\n It will be Sinner’s first match since his shock French Open second-round exit against Juan Manuel Cerundolo<\/a>. Carlos Alcaraz is not playing at Wimbledon as he continues to recover from injury<\/a>.<\/p>\n Daniil Medvedev opens against former Wimbledon runner-up Marin Cilic, and Stan Wawrinka, who is playing Wimbledon for the final time before retiring at the end of the year, faces Matteo Berrettini.<\/p>\n British No. 1 Cam Norrie plays Michael Zheng in the first round, while 2026 French Open champion and second seed Alexander Zverev faces Alexander Blockx. <\/p>\n Zverev could meet world No. 5 Ben Shelton in the semis.<\/p>\n Add TNT Sports as a preferred source here<\/a>\u00a0to enjoy more content like this.Enjoy daily highlights from Wimbledon 2026 on tntsports.co.uk<\/a> and the TNT Sports app, plus watch and stream highlights each evening and the men’s and women’s singles finals live on TNT Sports and HBO Max<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘One of my biggest inspirations’ – Draper thanks Murray for joining coaching team Video credit: SNTV Williams, 44,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55,117986],"class_list":["post-660268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wimbledon-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660268","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=660268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}