Falling Stars at Wimbledon

Nearly two dozen seeds—including Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula—already fell in the first round of Wimbledon.

WIMBLEDON, England — I have been working on all sorts of typical first-week-of-a-major fare for Bounces, eagerly ready to zag to lesser-known stories and characters as I enjoy doing for y’all here.

But because Wimbledon has had zero chill out of the gate this year—the most chaotic first round in tournament history ending on Tuesday with record-setting upheaval—I feel like I have to tend to the debris now covering the road before we can move forward.

After just one round, the outlook for this Wimbledon already feels fundamentally changed: 23 of the 64 seeds in the singles draws lost in the first round, the most ever at Wimbledon, and tying an all-time record at a Grand Slam event from the 2020 French Open¹. The 13 men’s seeds who lost is another Wimbledon record, and equals the Grand Slam record set at the 2004 Australian Open.

These numbers also are not 100 percent final, since No. 29 Brandon Nakashima has not yet finished his first round match; if he loses his first round match—which he was leading when it was called due to darkness—that would break the records further.

Beyond counting falling seeds, there are a few other metrics by which the upheaval is remarkable.

Perhaps most strikingly, the recent past wasn’t prologue at all: 6 of the 11 players who won a tour event in the grass court lead-up got bounced in the first round at Wimbledon. Tatjana Maria (WTA 500 Queen’s Club), Alexander Bublik (ATP 500 Halle), McCartney Kessler (WTA 250 Nottingham), Jessica Pegula (WTA 500 Bad Homburg), Maya Joint (WTA 250 Eastbourne), and Tallon Griekspoor (ATP 250 Mallorca) all lost their opening contests.

There have been implosive days at Wimbledons I’ve covered in the not-too-distant past: Black Wednesday at Wimbledon 2013 was a memorable ascending scale of shocks, a combination of injury withdrawals and upset losses from second round matches that ended with defending champion Roger Federer’s shocking defeat to 116th-ranked Sergiy Stakhovsky.

In 2018, not a single top-10 seed reached the women’s quarterfinals (but Serena Williams and two other former major champs did, so things hardly felt entirely random).

But this Wimbledon stands out for how many of the seeds failed to take even a first step.

Here’s a look at some of the most notable stumbles on Tuesday:

No. 2 Coco Gauff

Lost to 42nd-ranked Dayana Yastremska 7-5, 6-1.

Because of her star power and her recent triumph at Roland Garros, Gauff’s exit is definitely the newsiest, but most tennis pundits weren’t particularly shocked by it. Yastremska, a semifinalist at the Australian Open last year, is a powerful player whose flat, first-strike tennis is much more naturally suited to grass than Gauff’s weapons are.

“I saw the draw and knew it would be a tough match for me,” Gauff said after her loss.

Because her original breakout tournament was here in 2019, I was perhaps slow to pick up on just how ill-suited Gauff’s game is for grass, but that was clear on Tuesday.

There could be other factors in play—for example, Gauff was second-guessing her decision to go to Berlin to play a warm-up tournament only a week after her major triumph in Paris (squeezing a victory tour in New York in between)—but this was just clearly an issue about match-up and conditions.

When I asked Gauff how much she could make minor adjustments to change her fortunes, or if this sort of opponent on grass would always pose problems, Gauff said that she could’ve served better, but also said the brevity of the grass season gives her little time for retooling.

“Obviously I have to be able to counter that and also be as aggressive too as she is at times,” Gauff said. “I think it's just changing my playing style a little bit, which is difficult, 'cause for me it's like I approach clay—and I play this one way for however long clay season is, six to eight weeks. Then I feel like when I go on hard, I don't have to change as much, but I still have to adjust it a little bit. I know on grass I do [have to make big changes]. I feel like by the time I find it, it's already time to play. It's difficult, but I don't know, I have faith that if I can make these adjustments, I can do well here.”

Gauff finished her response with resolve.

“I really do want to do well here,” she said. “I'm not someone who wants to write myself off grass this early in my career, but I definitely need to make changes if I want to be successful here.”

As often happens in these press conferences, Gauff became most emotional when a reporter tried to cheer her up, talking about how good her summer had been overall.

“I mean, I'm trying to be positive,” Gauff said, soon wiping away tears. “After the match, I definitely was struggling in the locker room. I don't like losing…I'm sure my team and everyone is going to tell me, ‘You did well at Roland Garros, don't be so upset,’ things like that. I don't really like losing. I don't know, I just feel a little bit disappointed in how I showed up today.”

Gauff’s stat line was ugly in defeat with just 6 winners against 29 unforced errors.

No. 3 Jessica Pegula

Lost to 116th-ranked Elisabetta Cocciaretto 6-2, 6-3.

Jessica Pegula, who had won a strong tournament in Germany just three days ago, came out flat in a morning match and got quickly rolled, losing in just 58 minutes to an unheralded player. It was a rare lapse from the ultra-reliable Pegula, who hadn’t lost in the first round of a major since 2020.

Pegula’s somewhat subjective stat line was objectively awful, with just 5 winners and 24 unforced errors, but she was effusive in her praise for Cocciaretto.

“She played absolutely, like, incredible tennis,” Pegula said. “Do I think I played the best match ever? No, but I definitely don't think I was playing bad. It wasn't like I was playing that bad. She just was, yeah, hitting her shots and going for it, serving big, serving high percentage, going big second serves, redirecting the ball. It was just her day I honestly think today, yeah.”

Pegula said that, ultimately, she ran out of time to problem-solve, or impose her superior gifts on the match.

“The most frustrating part is that I wasn't able to figure it out, which I feel like I should be able to,” she said. “So that's always disappointing. At the same time, I don't think she gave me many chances.”

Pegula was asked if she might’ve had a greater chance of winning if the women played the extended best-of-five format that men play.

“100 percent, she replied. “I think it's harder to win two-out-of-three than it is to win three-out-of-five. Not physically, obviously, but I think it always is going to cater to the better player in the long run if you're playing three-out-of-five. I think you'd see a lot more upsets of top players if men played two-out-of-three in slams. It's a lot harder when you don't have that much time.”

But Pegula didn’t think increasing the sample size to decrease upsets was reason to play a bloated format.

“Would I want to play three-out-of-five? No, I would rather the men play two-out-of-three,” she said, smiling. “I don't think we all need to start playing three-out-of-five. For me it's too long. I personally lose interest watching the matches. I think they're incredible matches and incredible physically and mentally. I'm, like, Do we really need that? I don't know. I mean, some people love it. I personally will not watch a full five-hour match. People can't even hold their attention long enough they say these days with phones. How are they holding their attention for five hours? I don't know. Just not my thing.”

No. 3 Alexander Zverev

Lost to 72nd-ranked Arthur Rinderknech 7-6(3), 6-7(8), 6-3, 6-7(5), 6-4.

An early loss for Zverev is hardly a surprise at Wimbledon, given that he’s never reached the quarterfinals in any of his eight previous appearances here. But Rinderknech wasn’t considered much of a roadblock by most: he had only won one match at Wimbledon previously, and came in with a 1-16 record against top-10 opponents, only having scored his first such win a couple weeks ago over Ben Shelton in Queen’s Club.

But Zverev, even by his own standards, was remarkably passive on big points, particularly Rinderknech’s final match point: a longest-of-the-match 19-shot rally, mostly played safely in the middle of the court until Rinderknech ripped a backhand winner and collapsed to the court in joy.

There’s always a great deal of palpable relief around majors when Zverev departs, but much like Stefanos Tsitsipas’ a day earlier, there was no joy in Zverev’s press conference whatsoever, to say the least.

Here were a few of Zverev’s bleakest quotes on Tuesday evening:

• “I feel, generally speaking, quite alone in life at the moment, which is a feeling that is not very nice.”

• “I lost first round, but I don't think tennis is the problem right now for me. It's something else that I have to find within me at the moment.”

• “I've been through a lot of difficulties. I've been through a lot of difficulties in the media. I've been through a lot of difficulties in life generally. I've never felt this empty before. Just lacking joy, just lacking joy in everything that I do. It's not necessarily about tennis. Just lacking joy outside of tennis, as well.”

• “Even when I'm winning, even when I'm winning like in Stuttgart or Halle, it's not necessarily, like, a feeling that I used to get where I was happy, over the moon, I felt motivated to keep going. It's just not there right now for me, which, again, is the first time in my life which I'm feeling.”

• “You're going to bed and you're just not really motivated for the next day, you don't really feel like waking up and going to work. I think everybody had this feeling, it doesn't matter what job you had. As an athlete, it kind of reflects on performance a lot. That's more what I have right now.”

Zverev’s exit will make one guy very happy, though, as one of these remaining fellows will take an unexpected spot in the Wimbledon quarterfinals:

• No. 37 Nuno Borges

• No. 151 Billy Harris

• No. 144 Shintaro Mochizuki

• No. 17 Karen Khachanov

• No. 109 Kamil Majchrzak

• No. 89 Ethan Quinn

• No. 110 Cristian Garin

• No. 72 Arthur Rinderknech

No. 28 Alexander Bublik

Lost to 55th-ranked Jaume Munar 6-4, 3-6, 4-6, 7-6(5), 6-2

In terms of the oddsmakers before the tournament, Bublik was actually the biggest men’s title favorite to exit so far, usually placed fifth.

Munar had a tight match against Carlos Alcaraz at Queen’s Club, but I didn’t initially give him much hope of troubling an in-form Bublik.

That changed, however, after I attended Bublik’s pre-tournament press conference—likely one of the first he’s ever given, since he’s never before been considered so relevant to a major as he did after his very strong last month, reaching the quarterfinals at Roland Garros and winning ATP 500 Halle.

In that press conference, I thought Bublik seemed uncharacteristically edgy, seeming unusually irritable and contrarian under this new spotlight. He could’ve done huge things at this tournament with how well he’s been playing, but this should at least take some pressure off him now, which may well be a bigger win for his enjoyment of life.

Bubbling Under

The Survivors

The enormous number of big exits could’ve easily been a lot higher: several seeds narrowly escaped, including No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz and then No. 5 Taylor Fritz, who outlasted the record-breaking Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard 6-4 in the fifth set played to finish their postponed encounter.

Giovanni's Boom

Defending champion No. 17 Barbora Krejcikova, who I’d thought could’ve been ripe for an upset, turned around her match against Alex Eala for a 3-6, 6-2, 6-1 escape.

And on Monday, No. 4 Jasmine Paolini came back to fend off Anastasija Sevastova 2-6, 6-3, 6-2, while No. 6 Madison Keys had escaped 6-7(4), 7-5, 7-5 over Elena-Gabriela Ruse.

For further listening, check out the episode of No Challenges Remaining I recorded on Tuesday evening with friend of the show Ricky Dimon.

Beyond the paywall below, a look ahead to some Matches to Watch on Day 3 of Wimbledon 2025. Thanks for reading Bounces! -Ben