Novak Djokovic probably couldn’t be happier after he saw his draw for the 2024 Wimbledon Championships.
Draws are random, as officials take tokens with numbers out of a bag, and these numbers are then ordered next to each other to form a draw, the same as for the 2024 Wimbledon Championships draw.
In the draw, there was one player who was probably hoping for quite a few of his wishes to come true, and he got all of them granted. The Serbian is coming from knee surgery to repair his meniscus tear, and one thing he really needed was time.
With the surgery performed so close to the grass-court major, for a moment, it seemed impossible that the 37-year-old would make it to SW19, but he’s already in London, and he even beat Daniil Medvedev at the Hurlingham Club.
All the signs are showing that the 24-time major winner will be able to play at the 2024 Wimbledon Championships, but still, the last thing he wants is a difficult draw, which would make him test his knee early.
The first wish that the Serbian got granted was the day of his start. Since Carlos Alcaraz is the defending champion, and he was drawn in the other part of the draw, it means that the Spaniard’s half will start the play on Monday, as he will open the Centre Court as customary.
That means that Djokovic will start his tournament on Tuesday, giving him one extra day to recover properly. Then, in the first round of the tournament, he will play against Vit Kopriva, a qualifier ranked 123rd in the world.
The Czech player had a 1-2 career record on grass prior to entering the 2024 Wimbledon qualifying, he lost a set in all of his qualifying matches, and as his ranking suggests, he probably won’t be the hardest of tests for the seven-time champion at SW19.
Should Djokovic win, his second-round opponent will be the winner of the match between World No. 189, Alejandro Moro Canas, or World No. 271, Jacob Fearnley.
Moro Canas, like Kopriva, had a 1-2 career record on grass prior to the Wimbledon qualifying, and Fearnley, even though he’s coming off a triumph at the Nottingham Challenger, he was ranked 525th prior to that tournament, and almost never played on the Challenger Tour, let alone in ATP Tour-level matches.
While all of Djokovic’s possible opponents in the first two rounds certainly have their qualities, with his experience and incredible grass-court quality, the Serbian shouldn’t face a stiff challenge from any of them, practically giving him an extra week of time to recover, before taking on possibly the first experienced opponent, the 30th-seeded Tomas Martin Etcheverry, who may be his first seeded opponent on Saturday, almost one week after the tournament begins.
