The Wimbledon Draw: How it Works
Wimbledon
July 15, 2024
HOW THE DRAW WORKS
Have you ever wondered how the Wimbledon draw is managed? Hundreds of players take part in Wimbledon each year, making the task of working out where each player belongs within the main draw a serious challenge for organisers. The Wimbledon draw is a clever blend of organisation and randomness, combining a huge number of players drawn “out of a hat” and careful placement of top-seeded players. That ensures the tournament unfolds in the fairest way possible. In this guide, we’ll dig into the logic behind the Wimbledon draw to work out how players are selected and placed, how the top players are organised into each round and how Wimbledon’s organisers keep the event balanced.
The basics of Wimbledon
Before we look at the system used to work out the Wimbledon draw, let’s cover the basic rules of Wimbledon. The Championships are a single-elimination tournament. Each match pits one player (or doubles team) against another, with only one continuing. When a player wins a match, they progress into the next round. When a player loses, they drop out of the tournament. There are 128 gentlemen or ladies in each singles draw. Therefore singles players who win seven matches in a row win the tournament. With 64 men’s and women’s doubles teams starting out, the requirement is to win six times. For mixed doubles it’s 32 starting teams and so five victories are enough for glory.
During The Championships, it’s important that the best players don’t play against each other too early. If top-seeded players were matched up early in the tournament, many wouldn’t make it past the first round. This would mean that many less capable players could make their way through the first few rounds of the tournament before running into the top-ranked players later on. To guard against this, Wimbledon’s organisers seed 32 players before the singles draw starts, 16 in the doubles and eight in the mixed.
The random draw
The Wimbledon draw is randomly selected, and players are assigned a placement in the tournament by a special computer. Before the random draw begins, the 32 seeds in each singles category are removed from the draw – the organisers add them back in later. As mentioned, both the gentlemen’s and ladies’ singles tournaments take place over seven rounds, from the first round until the final. Non-seeded players are randomly assigned their places within the first round of the tournament. Since the first randomised computer draw doesn’t contain seeded players, not all players are immediately matched with someone. Once the first draw is complete, seeded players are added in to fill the draw for the tournament.
Organising the top seeds
The Wimbledon organisers choose 32 singles seeds which are then distributed evenly throughout each section of the tournament draw to prevent them playing against each other too early. Each seed is then randomly added into the available spots in each draw.
Since the first randomly selected draw doesn’t contain any seeded players, there are exactly 32 spots for the 32 seeded players to be placed into. Let’s use the gentlemen’s singles draw as an example. 2024’s top seed was Jannik Sinner. Novak Djokovic was second seed, Carlos Alcaraz was third and Alexander Zverev was fourth. You can read about the history of the seeding criteria here.
But the important thing to realise is that from 2021, the grass-based seeding system was abandoned in favour of simply following the world rankings.
The top seeds are randomly sorted into the draw, with the computer software ensuring that none of the seeds compete against their immediate rivals. Look at the draw for Wimbledon 2024 and you’ll see that:
- Jannik Sinner [1] was sorted into Section 1
- Novak Djokovic [2] was sorted into Section 4
- Carlos Alcaraz [3] was sorted into Section 2
- Alexander Zverev [4] was sorted into Section 3
This pattern continues for the 32 seeded players – each one is sorted into a different bracket for the first round of The Championships to prevent top-seeded players from competing against each other. Because of the way they are sorted into the draw, there is no chance of the four top seeds competing against each other until the semi-finals. Likewise, the top eight seeds can’t play against each other until the quarter-finals.
Putting the draw together
Once the seeded players have been organised and placed into the draw, everything is finalised. It could be argued that the draw gives an advantage to top-seeded players, who compete against players who are often far below their rankings early in the tournament. But crucially the system prevents two top-seeded players from competing too early, which would result in a less balanced final.
Can you predict 2025’s top seeds?
The top seeds are announced prior to the tournament, but it’s always fun to speculate on which players will rise to the top and which will fall to lower rankings than in 2024. Who do you think will rise, and who do you think will fall in the world rankings by then? Who do you think will surprise sports commentators before Wimbledon 2025 begins, thereby giving themselves a slightly better chance in the draw than previously anticipated?