India’s top singles player, Sumit Nagal, will make his first appearance in the men’s singles main draw at Wimbledon, facing higher-ranked Miomir Kecmanovic of Serbia in the first round on Monday.
World number 72 Nagal faces a challenging path, as he is in the same section of the draw as top seed and world number one Jannik Sinner, potentially meeting the Italian in the third round if he advances.
Nagal's first-round opponent, world number 53 Kecmanovic, defeated Nagal in their only previous match at the ATP 250 event in Cologne, Germany, four years ago.
Should Nagal progress past the opening round, he will face the winner of the match between Spain’s Pablo Carreno Busta, ranked 796 in the world, and world number 26 Tallon Griekspoor of the Netherlands.
Nagal, who is bound for the Olympics, previously lost in the first round of men’s singles qualifiers against Poland’s Kamil Majchrzak in 2018.
Nagal has had a strong season, having also qualified for the main draw of the Australian Open earlier this year. He defeated 31st-seeded Alexander Bublik of Kazakhstan in the opening round, becoming the first Indian male tennis player to beat a seeded player in 35 years at a Grand Slam.
He then won the Chennai Open ATP Challenger, entering the top-100 in the rankings.
In men’s doubles, veteran Indian Rohan Bopanna and his Australian partner Matthew Ebden, seeded second, will face the French pair Adrian Mannarino and Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard in the first round.
Bopanna and Ebden, the reigning Australian Open champions, reached the semi-finals of last year’s Wimbledon.
Another Indian, N Sriram Balaji, who will partner with Bopanna at the Paris Olympics, and his British partner Luke Johnson, will play the fourth-seeded Croatian-Salvadorian team of Mate Pavic and Marcelo Arevalo, this year’s French Open champions.
Yuki Bhambri and his French partner Albano Olivetti will meet the Kazakh duo of Bublik and Alexander Shevchenko, while Nagal and Serbia’s Dusan Lajovic will take on Spain’s Pedro Martinez and Jaume Munar in the opening round.
(With inputs from PTI)
