Gerard and Hewett to meet as Wimbledon draw is made
For the second successive Grand Slam Alfie Hewett and Joachim Gerard will meet in their opening men’s singles match after the wheelchair draw for Wimbledon was unveiled on Tuesday.
The match-up means that Hewett and Gerard go head-to-head for the fourth time in a row at a major after they contested the 2020 Roland Garros and 2021 Australian Open finals, sharing the honours as Gerard claimed his maiden Grand Sam title in Melbourne in February and Hewett went on to make it back-to-back titles in Paris last month.
Thursday’s contest also brings them together for the second time at Wimbledon after Gerard won their quarter-final in 2016, the first year that singles draws were contested on the grass courts in south west London.
Elsewhere, Gordon Reid, winner of the inaugural men’s singles title in 2016, will face world No. 1 Shingo Kunieda as the Japanese top seed sets out in his bid for the only Grand Slam singles crown to have so far eluded him.
Reid and Kunieda will also meet in their third Grand Slam doubles semi-final of 2021 after Hewett and Reid were drawn to play Gustavo Fernandez and Kunieda, with the Brits looking to make it seven Grand Slam titles in a row and four Wimbledon titles since 2016. Gerard and Tom Egberink face French second seeds Stephane Houdet and Nicolas Peifer.
It’s ten years since Egberink made his Grand Slam debut in the 2011 Wimbledon men’s doubles event and the Dutchman makes his singles debut at a major on Thursday when he faces Houdet. In the top half of the men’s singles draw, Fernandez will open his bid for back-to-back Wimbledon titles with a quarter-final against Peifer, the player he partnered to win the men’s doubles in 2015.
Diede de Groot and Aniek van Koot, the last two winners of the women’s singles title at Wimbledon, could be on course for a semi-final meeting this year, having met in the 2019 final.
Top seed De Groot will face world No. 11 Lucy Shuker in her quarter-final, while Van Koot begins her bid for back-to-back singles titles on the famous grass courts with a contest against world No. 4 Jordanne Whiley.
Like her compatriot Kunieda, Yui Kamiji has won every Grand Slam singles title apart from at Wimbledon and the world No. 2 opens her latest campaign against countrywoman Momoko Ohtani. World No. 6 Ohtani makes her Wimbledon debut after reaching the final at Roland Garros on her Grand Slam debut in 2020.
Both Wimbledon debutants in the women’s singles are in the bottom half of the draw, where Colombia’s Angelica Bernal becomes the first female South American wheelchair player to play at Wimbledon.
Bernal faces Kgothatso Montjane on Thursday’s opening day of play, Montjane having already earned her place in sporting history in 2018 when she made her Wimbledon debut and reached the first of her two successive semi-finals.
Dylan Alcott and Andy Lapthorne contested Wimbledon’s first quad singles final in 2019 and as the world’s top two ranked players they could meet again in this year’s final.
However, having beaten David Wagner in the semi-finals two years ago, world No. 2 Lapthorne has different opposition for his opening match this year after being drawn against US Open champion Sam Schroder as the 21-year-old Dutchman makes his Wimbledon debut.
Alcott will face Wagner as the Australian top seed begins his bid for a fourth successive Grand Slam title.
The quad doubles is scheduled to be the first of the Wimbledon wheelchair titles to be decided this week, when Alcott and Schroder face Lapthorne and Wagner on Friday. Lapthorne and Wagner will aim to make it back-to-back major titles together after beating Alcott and Schroder in a deciding match tie-break at Roland Garros last month.