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As it turns out, Carson Branstine’s spot at the very top of the Wimbledon qualifying draw was an omen of what was to come at the big show.
After getting a terribly tough draw (at least on paper) and winning three matches at Roehampton, the 24-year-old Can-American finds herself at the very top of the main draw again – once again, in the No. 2 spot in a 128-player drawsheet.
Which means this: Branstine will playworld No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka in the first round, in her Grand Slam main draw debut.
Well, at least that means she’ll have a full house on a stadium court!
We think these two had a little bit of fun during practice #Wimbledon | @SabalenkaA | @DjokerNole pic.twitter.com/gEQvFUN5At
— Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) June 26, 2025
The other Canadian in the women’s singles is No. 29 seed Leylah Fernandez.
And she, too, will get a decent court assignment.
Fernandez drew 16-year-old Hannah Klugman, who reached the girls’ final at Roland Garros and is a wild card into the Wimbledon singles for the first time.
As for Denis Shapovalov, the No. 27 seed, he has a winnable first round in Mariono Navone of Argentina, mostly a clay-court aficionado.
It looks good for him until the third round – when he would be slotted to met No. 1 seed Jannik Sinner. But if there’s a surface the 2016 junior Wimbledon champion might want to meet him on, it’s probably grass.
As for No. 25 seed Félix Auger-Aliassime, he finds himself in an identical situation at the bottom of the draw.
He plays veteran Aussie journeyman James Duckworth in the first round, looks good for the second round – and then would face No. 2 seed and defending champion Carlos Alcaraz in the third round.
Gabriel Diallo will play the hard-hitting German Daniel Altmaier in the first round and if he wins that, would be looking at a second round against the winner of a match between No 5 seed Taylor Fritz, and huge-serving Frenchman Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard.
As the No. 6 seed, Novak Djokovic was either going to be drawn into the “Sinner half” or the “Alcaraz half” in terms of potential quarterfinal or semifinal – if they all get there.
Of the two, most likely would have preferred him to end up in the Sinner half, to keep open the possibility of the two best grass-court players in the draw meeting in a potential final.
And that’s what happened. But if Djokovic wasn’t drawn to play either of the top two in a potential quarterfinal, that indeed did turn out to be the worst-case scenario, at least for the Brits, if not others. Because Djokovic vs No. 4 seed Jack Draper is the potential final-eight clash.
(The other possibilities were Taylor Fritz, Lorenzo Musetti and Alexander Zverev).
No byes, and no freebies, in a full 128-player draw.
So some of the first-round matches are going to be must-watches.
– Emma Raducanu vs. young British junior Mingge Xu, just 17
– 2023 champion Marketa Vondrousova vs. American McCartney Kessler, who won the WTA 250 at Nottingham the same day Vondrousova won in Berlin. There’ a certain symmetry to that.
– No. 9 Paula Badosa gets Brit Katie Boulter.
– Naomi Osaka will face Aussie qualifier Talia Gibson and if she wins, the winner between Zheng Qinwen and Katerina Siniakova.
– Defending champion Barbora Krejcikova, who withdrew from singles and doubles at Eastbourne Thursday with a thigh issue, will play rising young Alexandra Eala, who is in the Eastbourne semifinal Friday.
– Two-time champion Petra Kvitova, in her final Wimbledeon, will come up against No. 10 seed Emma Navarro.
– No. 2 seed Coco Gauff will clash with a very in-form Dayana Yastremska.
On the men’s side, beyond the potentially tricky one for Fritz against Mpetshi Perricard, there are plenty of interesting openers. Although, with the switch to a best-of-five format for Wimbledon, the favorites have a tendency to prevail more often.
– No. 19 seed Grigor Dimitrov will face Japan’s Yoshihito Nishioka in a battle players who have retired or withdrawn from more tournaments this year than perhaps … any combo you can name. The betting line on that one might be if both will actually make it to the coin toss.
– No. 18 seed Ugo Humbert has the unfortunate luck of drawing his countryman, Gaêl Monfils
– No. 2 seed Alcaraz will send off Italian veteran Fabio Fognini in what should be an entertaining one.
– No. 8 Holger Rune meets huge-serving Nicolas Jarry, who had to (and did) get through qualifying this year.
– Joao Fonseca, the teenage pheom making his Wimbldeon debut, comes up against a quality customer (and the crowd) in Brit Jacob Fearnley.
– Matteo Berrettini, a former finalist who has been out with injury, squeezes into the No. 32 seeded spot and will play Kamil Majchrzak of Poland.
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