IN MOST years, the Wimbledon singles title goes to one of the top seeds. That is how the tournament is designed. Seeds are assigned to the top 32 players in the world based on their ATP or WTA ranking, a rolling points table built on results across the previous 52 weeks. The higher your ranking, the better your position in the draw and the longer you can avoid the strongest opponents.
In Wimbledon’s history, only three players have won the tournament as unseeded entrants, and there is every possibility that one of the Wimbledon favourites 2026 could be defeated by an underdog. Let’s take a look at each unseeded winner of the tournament.
Boris Becker, 1985
Becker arrived at the 1985 Championships ranked 20th in the world, just outside the top 16 who received seeds at the time. And at 17, he became the youngest male Grand Slam champion in history.
He fought through five-set matches in the third and fourth rounds and again in the semi-final against No. 5 seed Anders Jarryd, before beating Kevin Curren 6-3, 6-7, 7-6, 6-4 in the final. He spent three hours and 18 minutes on court.
He won again at Wimbledon the following year, this time as the fourth seed. The surprise could not be repeated.
Goran Ivanisevic, 2001
Ivanisevic is the only player in the history of the Championships to have won Wimbledon as a wildcard. A wildcard is an entry granted outside the ranking system, a step below even a standard unseeded place. He received one in 2001, ranked 125th in the world.
He had reached three Wimbledon finals before: 1992, 1994, and 1998, but he lost each one. By 2001, at 29, much of his career had been disrupted by injury. The wildcard was awarded partly in recognition of his long history at the event.
He won seven matches in a row to take the title, beating Patrick Rafter 6–3, 3–6, 6–3, 2–6, 9–7 in the final. The crowd backed him throughout, drawn by years of watching him fall short at the same venue. No wildcard has won Wimbledon since.
Marketa Vondrousova, 2023
No unseeded woman had won Wimbledon before 2023. Not in 147 years of the Ladies Singles Championship. An unseeded woman had not even reached the final in 60 years. The last to do so was Billie Jean King, runner-up in 1963, who sat in the Royal Box to watch Vondrousova play.
Vondrousova arrived ranking 42nd in the world. A year earlier, she had not competed at Wimbledon at all, watching from the stands with a cast on her surgically repaired left wrist, having finished 2022 ranked 99th. She dropped only one set across seven matches and beat No. 6 seed Ons Jabeur 6-4, 6-4 in the final and defied all tennis odds. Her WTA ranking moved from 42nd to 10th overnight.
What connects them
All three won seven consecutive matches on grass against opponents who were, by ranking and seeding, expected to do better.
Becker’s serve and net aggression drove his run at 17. Ivanisevic had the same serve and the motivation of three previous losing finals. Vondrousova’s low error count and precision from the left side made her nearly impossible to break under pressure.
Becker did it first. 16 years passed before Ivanisevic matched him. Another 22 before Vondrousova became the third. She remains the only unseeded woman ever to have won at Wimbledon.
Article by Craig Linton
