Sumit Nagal is set to face Serbia’s Miomir Kecmanovic in his maiden main-draw match at Wimbledon, as per the draw announced on Friday.
For the 26-year-old Nagal, this is second straight Major where he has got direct entry into the main draw.
Nagal, the first Indian to appear in the main draw of men’s singles since Prajnesh Gunneswaran in 2019, is in the same section of the draw as top seed and World No. 1 Jannik Sinner and could face the Italian in the third round.
Olympic-bound Nagal and Kecmanovic, who is World No. 53, have met each other once - in the opening round of an ATP 250 event in Cologne four years ago where the Serbian won 4-6, 7-6(4), 6-1.
Nagal’s sole appearance in men’s singles at Wimbledon came in 2018 where he lost to Poland’s Kamil Majchrzak in the first round of qualifying. The Indian had won Boys’ Doubles title at Junior Wimbledon in 2015, partnering Vietnam’s Lý Hoàng Nam.
It has been a breakout season for Nagal. The Indian started the year by qualifying for the main draw of the Australian Open where he shocked 31st-seeded Kazakh Alexander Bublik in the opening round. He became the first Indian man in 35 years to defeat a seeded player in a Slam.
He then won the Chennai Open ATP Challenger to make his Top 100 debut in the ATP Rankings.
He also became the first ever Indian man to record a main-draw win at Monte Carlo Masters, beating Italy’s Matteo Arnaldi in the first round.
Recently, the Indian clinched his sixth title on the Challenger Tour in Heilbronn, Germany. That result took him up to 77 in the ATP Rankings on June 10, the cut-off date for qualification for Paris, and made him one of the alternates before his spot got confirmed. He followed that title with a runner-up finish in Perugia, Italy, the next week to rise up to 71 which is the joint-fourth highest ranking achieved by an Indian man since the introduction of the computerised system of rankings in 1973.
Men’s Doubles
Rohan Bopanna and his Australian partner Matthew Ebden, seeded second, face the all-French duo of Adrian Mannarino and Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard in the first round of men’s doubles. Bopanna-Ebden, the reigning Australian Open champions, had reached the semifinals of last year’s edition at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.
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N. Sriram Balaji, who will be Bopanna’s doubles partner at Paris Olympics, has paired up with Britain’s Luke Johnson. The duo takes on fourth-seeded Croatian-Salvadorian pair of Mate Pavic and Marcelo Arevalo, who won this year’s French Open.
Yuki Bhambri and his French partner Albano Olivetti take on the Kazakh duo of Bublik and Alexander Shevchenko.
Nagal has also entered the doubles draw. The Indian and Serbia’s Dusan Lajovic have a first-round clash against Spain’s Pedro Martinez and Jaume Munar.
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