Raducanu, Vondrousova, Cilic and the other unseeded players to avoid at Wimbledon

The draw for the opening round of the Championships takes place Friday - and there are plenty of potential banana skins

Emma Raducanu is ranked No 38 in the world, making her one of the highest-ranked non-seeds in the draw. Reuters

Wimbledon is fast approaching and there are plenty of burning questions that will be answered when the draw is conducted on Friday morning at the All England Club.

Will a sixth-seeded Novak Djokovic avoid landing in Carlos Alcaraz’s or Jannik Sinner’s quarters of the draw? Will the tennis gods be kind to an eighth-seeded Iga Swiatek as she attempts to find her game on grass? Will two-time champion Petra Kvitova get the farewell she deserves on her farewell appearance at SW19?

The Czech lefty came back from a 17-month maternity leave in February and recently announced she will be retiring from tennis after the US Open.

Ranked 573 in the world and playing Wimbledon as a wildcard, Kvitova is a name no one will want to draw in the first round, irrespective of her 1-6 record this season.

In anticipation of the draw, here are other unseeded threats that could cause some serious damage and an upset or two at the Championships this upcoming fortnight.

Marketa Vondrousova

As one Czech lefty gets ready to bid farewell to her happiest hunting ground, another one is finding her form at just the right time.

The 2023 Wimbledon champion won her first title in two years last week in Berlin by navigating a brutal draw that saw her defeat Australian Open winner Madison Keys, world No 12 Diana Shnaider, two-time Wimbledon finalist Ons Jabeur, and world No 1 Aryna Sabalenka before overcoming Chinese qualifier Wang Xinyu in the final.

Vondrousova has spent half of the past 18 months sidelined with injuries and has also had shoulder surgery. She entered Berlin ranked 164 in the world. The 500 points she racked up there have sent her flying 91 spots up the charts, but that’s still not high enough to snag her a seeded position at Wimbledon – much to the dismay of the 32 seeds who could end up drawing Vondrousova in the opening round.

Her plans between Berlin and Wimbledon?

“I’ll just try to enjoy a few days off now and back to hard work. Stay grounded, stay in your lane, focus on tennis and play these matches as if nothing happened,” she told wtatennis.com.

Tatjana Maria

Another fairytale that unfolded this grass-court season came courtesy of Tatjana Maria, a 37-year-old mother of two, who reminded us all just how lethal she can be on this surface.

A Wimbledon semi-finalist in 2022, Maria claimed the fourth tour-level title of her career, and second on grass, by blasting her way through the main draw at Queen's Club, where women’s tennis returned this year for the first time since 1973.

After beating Canada’s Leylah Fernandez in her opener, Maria knocked out four top-15 players, including Grand Slam champions Keys and Elena Rybakina.

No one will want to see the German’s name next to theirs when the draw is revealed on Friday.

Emma Raducanu

Before she stunned the world by winning the US Open as a qualifier back in 2021, Emma Raducanu’s first tour-level breakthrough came at Wimbledon two months earlier.

Ranked 338 at the time, the then 18-year-old claimed three main-draw wins to become the youngest British woman in the Open Era to reach the last 16 at Wimbledon.

Raducanu has made the fourth round at the Championships twice in three appearances, and her warm-up for this year’s edition included a quarter-final run at Queen's earlier this month.

The 22-year-old is up to 38 in the world rankings, making her one of the highest-ranked non-seeds in the draw.

With the home crowd behind her and her confidence rising, Raducanu will be a tricky first-round opponent.

Marin Cilic

This time last year, Marin Cilic was ranked outside the top 1,000 and in the midst of a six-month injury layoff that included surgery on his right knee.

The 2014 US Open champion returned to action in late August and was crowned champion in just his third tournament back, clinching the ATP 250 event in Hangzhou, China last September.

Cilic, a former world No 3, arrives at this year’s Wimbledon ranked 85 in the world and is coming off a grass-court title run at the Challenger Tour event in Nottingham.

The 36-year-old Croatian has historically been one of the tour’s best grass-court players. He won three tour-level titles on the surface – twice at Queen’s and once in Stuttgart – and reached the final at Wimbledon in 2017, where he suffered from a painful foot blister during a straight-sets defeat to Roger Federer.

He has a 80-32 win-loss record at tour-level on grass; his 71.4% success rate on the surface is the fourth-best among active ATP players.

Injuries have kept Cilic away from the All England Club since 2021, and he will no doubt want to make the most of his return to SW19.

Cilic’s final warm-up for Wimbledon will be the Giorgio Armani Tennis Classic exhibition event at London’s Hurlingham Club alongside the likes of Novak Djokovic and Lorenzo Musetti.

Roberto Bautista Agut

The Spaniard has made it into the second week of Wimbledon in five of his 10 Wimbledon appearances, amassing an impressive 71% win percentage at the All England Club.

His reached the semi-finals in 2019, his best performance at a Grand Slam to date, losing to Djokovic in four sets.

At 37, the former world No 9 is still a tough nut to crack on grass – his semi-final run at Queen's is testament to that – securing wins over world No 9 Holger Rune and No 17 Jakub Mensik before falling to eventual champion Alcaraz.

He’s back up to 43 in the rankings and will be high on confidence when Wimbledon kicks off on Monday.

Gabriel Diallo

Canada’s big-serving Gabriel Diallo is enjoying a breakthrough 2025, highlighted by a maiden ATP title on the lawns of ‘s-Hertogenbosch earlier this month.

Diallo was competing for the first time at tour-level on grass that week but was unfazed by the challenge as he utilised his powerful game to full effect on the surface to lift his first ATP trophy.

A march to the quarter-finals at the Masters 1000 tournament in Madrid in May – as a lucky loser – showed how dangerous Diallo can be in fast conditions.

The 23-year-old is among the top 20 on the tour’s aces leaderboard for this season and has more than halved his ranking this campaign, reaching a current career-high of 41.

He’ll be making his first Wimbledon main draw appearance next week and is a potential banana skin for many top players.