The men of our participants have five: Daniil Medvedev (3rd seed), Andrey Rublev (7), Aslan Karatsev, as well as Alexander Shevchenko and Roman Safiullin – the debutants of this “major”. In women, we will follow Daria Kasatkina (11), Veronika Kudermetova (12), Lyudmila Samsonova (15), Ekaterina Alexandrova (21), Anastasia Potapova (22), Margarita Betova (nee Gasparyan) and Anna Blinkova. In addition, for the first time, 16-year-old Kamilla Rakhimova and Mirra Andreeva, who won the qualification, entered the main draw of the “Grand Slam” grass. Due to injuries, Karen Khachanov and Anna Kalinskaya withdrew from the competition. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova was left without a wildcard from the organizers, and Pavel Kotov had visa problems.
Veronica serves straight
A good start at Wimbledon turned out for Veronika Kudermetova. Although the victory in the first round over the representative of Estonia Kaya Kanepi, who occupies the 101st line in the WTA ranking, cannot be called easy – 7:6 (7:4), 6:4. On the one hand, the Russian woman was serving: she hit 14 aces in one match, and in one of the games, three innings followed. At the same time, the opponent still managed to impose a fight at the reception. So all the points Kudermetvoy had to pull out.
After a two-year hiatus, 14 Russians became Wimbledon participants. Let’s see how many of them make it to the second week of the tournament
In the next round, Veronika will play either the Czech Marketa Vondrousova or the American Peyton Stearns.
In the men’s group, Andrey Rublev confidently advanced to the second round, beating Australian Max Purcell (64) in three sets with a score of 6:3, 7:5, 6:4. And in the next match we can expect a Russian showdown. After all, Rublev will play with the best pair of Lucas Van Asch (France) – Aslan Karatsev (Russia). Aslan was close to victory, but in the fourth set the match was interrupted by rain.
Alas, Kamilla Rakhimova (72) with four match points in a tiebreak lost to Spain’s Cristina Busca (78) – 3:6, 6:4, 6:7 (9:11) and Lyudmila Samsonova (15) in two Lost tie-breaks to Romanian Ana Bogdan (57) – 6:7 (1:7), 6:7 (4:7).
Direct speech
World number three Daniil Medvedev, who is on the Wimbledon favorites list, will kick off the tournament today with a match against Britain’s Arthur Fury, who received an invite from the organizers.
The day before, Daniil shared his expectations for the next commander at a press conference.
£44.7m is Wimbledon’s record prize money, up 10 per cent from the last edition. The individual champions will each receive £2.35 million and the finalists will receive £1.175 million.
About your chances
– At the moment, Wimbledon is the Grand Slam tournament, where I showed my worst result – the fourth round. At Roland Garros, I reached the quarterfinals (Medvedev is the champion of the US Open-2021. – Approx. “RG”). Of course I want to change that. I feel like I can do well at Wimbledon, although as always there are many difficult opponents who may not allow you to succeed. But I want to show my best side here.
About Novak Djokovic
– If I counted correctly, then Novak (the reigning Wimbledon champion and 23-time Grand Slam winner. – Approximately “RG”) played 70 majors and was in the final 35 times. To be honest, I don’t know how he does it. Do you have bad days? Probably, there are, like everyone else, but even so he manages to beat his opponents. That is why for me he is the best player in the history of tennis. Although in general this is, of course, a controversial issue. I was able to beat Novak at the US Open and I am very proud of it. And I don’t want to stop. I want to try again to play the final against Djokovic or against anyone else, and more than once. This is something I haven’t been able to do in quite some time.
