11 reasons Monday was Britain's worst day in Wimbledon history

WIMBLEDON — There have been some dark days in British tennis, but few worse than this.
Never in the Open era, which started in 1968, have 10 Brits lost a singles match in the same day at Wimbledon.

“It’s fair to say there were some bloody tough draws,” explained Fran Jones, whose defeat to Diane Parry took the Brits to double figures on the day.

And there certainly were. More than half of Britain’s singles entrants drew players ranked inside the top 50, an echelon that only contains two British players. But statistics could not hide the grim reality that so many Brits had been handed wildcard opportunities at the grass-court major and none had grasped the chance.

It was a double whammy in the space of 16 hours for arguably Britain’s two best players, first Raducanu revealing a stress fracture on Sunday night and Draper then pulling out because of a recurrence of the bone bruising in his arm.

There are serious questions to be asked about the physical resilience of both, but for Monday’s purposes it was a bad start, to say the least.

Stojsavljevic, 17, was a junior US Open champion in 2024 but is still finding her way in the senior game and is yet to win a main draw match at a major. Up against the No 11 seed, this was always likely to be a tough ask.

“Even when I was getting destroyed, they were still cheering for me,” she said afterwards with a smile.

Basing will rise more than 60 places in the world rankings after coming through qualifying to play a first ever grand slam main draw.

Another of Britain’s many exports to US college, the Stanford graduate was a rookie at this level and he looked it, losing the last 13 games in a row and only hitting eight winners in the entire match.

It was always going to be an uphill battle for world No 220 Gill against Rafa Jodar, the new Spanish star who is already inside the top 30.

But Jodar had never played a professional match on grass while this was the Brit’s 18th. It made no odds, though, as he won just 11 games against the former University of Virginia student.

One of only 19 Brits in the entire first round who was drawn against a lower-ranked player, last year’s quarter-finalist Norrie was supposed to be “the banker”.

But the British No 1 is two months without a competitive win, a rib injury cutting short his French Open and losing in the first round of Queen’s to Alejandro Davidovich Fokina.

He did manage to take Michael Zheng, a recent college graduate with a burgeoning reputation, to five sets, but Norrie admitted the American played better “in the big moments”.

The inclusion of Dart on the list of wildcards was a controversial one: she is 29 years old, has lost four of her five grass-court matches this year and this is her fifth main draw singles wildcard.

Clare Balding on the BBC coverage said she had proven she deserved it by taking Ostapenko, who was the next player out of the seedings, to a third-set decider.

True, Dart was not expected to win on paper, but she also had opportunities to pull off the upset, including leading by a break of serve twice in the decider.

“It’s a long way from the finish line,” Dart explained.

“When you play players of the stature of Jelena, you know there is one or two points in it. She stepped up at some crucial moments, and she hit quite pretty close to the line a lot of the times.”

She added: “Today it felt like luck wasn’t really in my favour.”

Dudeney has been racking up trophies on the third-tier ITF Tour this season, winning titles in Tunisia (twice), Nottingham and most recently Estepona in Spain. But they all came on hard court and none against an opponent ranked inside the top 400.

So facing the 129mph serve of Parks was a whole new level, although the Brighton player will take heart from having won more receiving points than her opponent. Unfortunately, she herself was broken four times.

Tarvet was one of the stories of last year’s tournament because he was still a college athlete and therefore could not accept prize money. Instead, he had to find ways to spend his second-round cash by incurring expenses for his coaching team.

There is no such problem this year having turned professional, but also not quite as much money involved, as he ran into Arthur Rinderknech. The Frenchman did let Tarvet, who remains fairly green at professional level, back into match in the third set, but quickly shut the door again.

A junior French Open finalist last year, hopes are high of Klugman’s chances in the senior game, but we can’t all be Emma Raducanu. Klugman will take time to adjust and got a rotten draw in former champion Barbora Krejcikova, who overwhelmed her.

“That’s probably the best player I have played so far in my career,” Klugman said.

“Her level, her ball was a joke. I’ve never really felt that, her forehand, the jump on her forehand.”

One of the teenage stars who was awarded a wildcard last year as well with Klugman and Stojsavljevic, Xu has not played much in 2026 and won even less.

At tour level, this was just her fourth match of the season and her fourth defeat, this time to the world No 65.

Jones was in floods of tears after a sobering defeat on what is not her best surface. She is unusual for a Brit in that she grew up tennis-wise in Spain and has ended up a far better clay-courter than grass or even hard.

Parry, meanwhile, is a French player who thrives on grass, and showed her class to close out the day of British misery.

Only Jack Pinnington-Jones avoided defeat, saved from Brandon Nakashima by bad light. Perhaps Tuesday will be better. It cannot get worse.