Wimbledon 2025 Draw: Reactions, predictions and tough first rounds

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year” – Wimbledon 2025 is upon us and Lucy and Eugene are here to walk through the draw. French Open champion Coco Gauff, seeded second, has a tricky opening round, while (4)Jasmine Paolini, fresh from a semi-final run in Bad Homburg, finds herself in the top half alongside world No 1 Aryna Sabalenka. Australian Open champion (6)Madison Keys and four-time Grand Slam winner Naomi Osaka also occupy top-half spots. Last year’s women’s doubles champion, Taylor Townsend, made it through qualifying and can look forward to a first-round match against fellow American and 28th seed Sofia Kenin. In the men’s draw, 10th seed Ben Shelton, in the same section as top seed Jannik Sinner, starts against a qualifier, while 12th seed Frances Tiafoe, in the bottom half, is projected to meet world No 2 Carlos Alcaraz in quarter-finals. As is draw-show tradition, we close with our picks for the men’s and women’s titles. We’re looking forward to bringing you daily audio pods from the grounds from Day 1. Also, with this being the 50th anniversary of Arthur Ashe winning Wimbledon, we’ll be paying tribute to the trailblazer throughout the fortnight. Don't forget to rate, review and share on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Audioboom. For daily tennis updates: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blackspinglobal Twitter: https://twitter.com/BlackSpinGlobal TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@blackspinglobal Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/blackspinglobal.bsky.social GET OUR MERCH HERE: https://blackspinglobal.com/collections 00:00 Intro 07:07 Coco Gauff’s path 11:50 Jasmine Paolini’s path 16:34 Madison Keys’s path 20:47 Alycia Parks’s path 21:54 Naomi Osaka’s 25:06 Hailey Baptiste 25:20 Heather Watson 25:47 Taylor Townsend 26:59 Rest of the women’s draw standouts 30:15 Ben Shelton’s path 34:20 Frances Tiafoe’s path 39:42 Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard’s path 44:14 Gabriel Diallo’s path 45:25 Gael Monfils’s path 48:40 Christopher Eubanks 49:35 Jay Clark 50:48 George Loffhagen 51:46 Rest of men’s draw standouts 55:45 Predictions