Wimbledon 2022: Raducanu gets tough draw as Murray faces Duckworth opener

Emma Raducanu has drawn one of the most difficult first-round opponents she could have faced at Wimbledon in the form of Alison Van Uytvanck while Andy Murray and Serena Williams were both handed favourable opening matches.

Raducanu’s participation still hinges on her having sufficiently recovered from a side strain suffered at the start of the grass season while Van Uytvanck is an accomplished and experienced grass court player with a good serve, a solid forehand and an all-court game. In 2018, the Belgian defeated the Wimbledon defending champion Garbine Muguruza en route to the fourth round.

Since the beginning of this grass season, Van Uytvanck has won the Surbiton $100k tournament and the WTA 125 event in Gaiba, Italy, in addition to a quarter-final at ‘s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands. Her only defeats on grass this year have come in third set tie-breaks to the world No 6 Aryna Sabalenka and No 25 Amanda Anisimova this week in Bad Homburg.

As she continues her recovery from the side injury she sustained in the first game of her grass season in Nottingham, Raducanu will train on No 1 Court as Wimbledon continues its new initiative of allowing players to break in the top courts in order to lessen the chances of competitors falling in the opening rounds.

Murray will open his campaign against 77th-ranked Australian James Duckworth. If he is in any good shape, it is a match that he will have a great chance of winning. Duckworth has lost his last nine ATP main draw matches and he missed four months of this season due to injury. The defending champion Novak Djokovic begins his quest for a seventh title against South Korea’s Kwon Soon-woo while second seed Rafael Nadal, who is set to make his first appearance at