Players wishing to enter The Championships are required to submit their entry on a special form, which must be submitted six weeks before The Championships begin. The Committee of Management, with the assistance of the Referee, use computer rankings to determine which players will be admitted directly into Championship events, those who have to qualify and those who are rejected.
About 500 entries, including juniors, are accepted. Of these, 128 are included in the draw for the Gentlemen's Singles and Ladies' Singles Championships, 64 pairs for the Gentlemen's Doubles and Ladies' Doubles and 48 pairs for the Mixed Doubles Championships.
Qualifying
Qualifiers are the winners of the qualifying competitions
staged at Roehampton the week before The Championships.
Players entering the singles events must play three rounds on grass in the week before The Championships. Unlike The Championships, there is no single 'winner' of Qualifying. Instead the players who win all three rounds — 16 in the Gentlemen's Singles and 12 in the Ladies' Singles — will progress, along with four pairs in each of the Ladies' and Men's Doubles events.
Lucky losers
are losers from the final round of qualifying competitions — chosen
at random— to fill any vacancy which occurs in the
draw before the first round has been completed.
Wild cards
Wild cards are players without a high enough world ranking who are
accepted directly into the main Championship draws at the discretion
of the Committee. Wild cards are usually offered on the basis of past performance at Wimbledon
or to increase British interest. Wild cards have been allocated
since 1977 and from 2003 some singles Wild Cards have been determined
by competition. The only wild card to win the Men's Singles title was Goran Ivanisevic in 2001. No Wild Card has won the Ladies' Singles
title.
Seeding
A simplified form of seeding was introduced in 1924 when up to four
representatives of a nation were drawn in the four different quarters
of the draw. In 1927 full seeding was carried out and competitors
were selected according to ability, irrespective of nationality. Seeding has been
based on computer rankings since 1975.
Since 1927 only two unseeded players have won the Gentlemen’s Singles
— Boris Becker in 1985 and Goran Ivanisevic in 2001. No unseeded player has ever won the Ladies’ Singles. Eleven
unseeded players have reached the final of the Gentlemen’s
Singles and four unseeded players have reached the final of the
Ladies’ Singles. Nine unseeded pairs have won the Gentlemen’s
Doubles, five unseeded pairs have won the Ladies’ Doubles
and ten unseeded pairs have won the Mixed Doubles. |
