If Emma Raducanu is going to make it through to the second week of Wimbledon for the second time in her career then she is going to have do it the hard way, with the former champion Marketa Vondrousova and the world No 1, Aryna Sabalenka, blocking her path to a place in week two.
With 23 British players in the two singles draws – the most since 1984 – an all-British first-round match was always a high probability and Raducanu finds herself up against the Welsh teenager Mimi Xu in round one. Providing the 22-year-old British No 1, who has been nursing a back problem in recent weeks, gets past the world No 318, Vondrousova, the winner in 2023, is likely to be waiting in round two. A match with Sabalenka, probably the toughest task in women’s tennis right now on any surface, would be a third-round encounter.
