“Hello Wimbledon” - Sumit Nagal posts picture of Centre Court as he prepares for his main-draw debut
India's top-ranked tennis player Sumit Nagal recently took to X (formerly Twitter) to post a picture of the Wimbledon Center Court where the Championships will take place, captioning it “Hello Wimbledon”. Notably, this will be his main-draw debut in the Grand Slam tournament.
It’s worth noting that in 2015, Nagal won the Wimbledon boys' doubles title with Lý Hoàng Nam from Vietnam, defeating Reilly Opelka and Akira Santillan in the final to emerge as the sixth Indian player to lift the junior Grand Slam title.
Though Nagal was part of the men's singles qualifying draw in Wimbledon 2018, he couldn't make an impact, losing to Kamil Majchrzak by 2-6, 0-6 to bow out of the campaign without making it to the main draw.
The 26-year-old Indian tennis player recently ended as a runner-up in Perugia Challenger, in Italy. He suffered a defeat against Luciano Darderi from Italy in the final. Before that, he won the Heilbronn Challenger.
He has been in impressive form of late and his recent results helped him bag the Paris Olympics 2024 quota in the men’s singles event, scheduled to take place in July and August.
Nagal will be the first Indian singles tennis player to compete in back-to-back Summer Games since Leander Paes, who won the bronze medal at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. Earlier in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Nagal stunned Denis Istomin in the first round before suffering a loss to Daniil Medvedev in the second round.
Sumit Nagal achieves his career-best 71st rank
Most recently, Sumit Nagal secured his career-best 71st rank in the latest ATP singles rankings, released on June 17. He ascended six spots from 77th to 71st.
It has been a remarkable season for Sumit Nagal so far. He started off the year by qualifying for the main draw of the Australian Open, where he bagged a win over 31st-seeded Kazakh Alexander Bublik in the opening round.
Later, the youngster clinched the title win in the Chennai Open ATP Challenger to make it into the top 100 in the ATP Rankings for the first time. He became the first-ever Indian male player to make it to the main draw at the Monte-Carlo Masters.
Additionally, he made his French Open debut and also secured his sixth title on the Challenger Tour in Heilbronn, Germany.