The most anticipated tennis event of the year is here. Who is going to win Wimbledon in 2023? Our tournament projection model has generated its Wimbledon predictions, as Novak Djokovic seeks history.
After Novak Djokovic and Iga Świątek tasted glory at the French Open, the third grand slam event of 2023 has swiftly arrived.
The 136th edition of the Wimbledon Championships begins on Monday and, with the draw now made, players can begin eyeing up their potential opponents for what looks likely to be a dramatic fortnight.
In the men’s singles, Djokovic is bidding to win Wimbledon for a fifth consecutive tournament, which would give him a record-extending 24th major championship.
He is also one Wimbledon win away from matching Roger Federer for the All England Club record of eight titles, but young star Carlos Alcaraz now has a grass-court title under his belt and is poised to challenge.
Świątek has been a dominant force on the WTA Tour over the past two years, although she has strong rivals in the women’s singles. Elena Rybakina comes in as defending champion, while the likes of Aryna Sabalenka, Ons Jabeur and Petra Kvitová also have stronger grass-court pedigrees than the Pole.
With everything to play for, we have turned to the Opta supercomputer to discover its Wimbledon predictions, both for tournament win probabilities and its ranking projections.
Who Wins Wimbledon? The Quick Hits
- Carlos Alcaraz (16.2%) is favoured over Novak Djokovic (12.6%) to win Wimbledon.
- Those two are clear frontrunners to be the men’s champion, with Daniil Medvedev (6.6%), Jannik Sinner (5.0%) and Nick Kyrgios (4.1%) their most likely rivals.
- Despite being the fourth and fifth seeds, Casper Ruud and Stefanos Tsitsipas are rated 14th and 15th respectively by our model for Wimbledon 2023.
- In-form Iga Świątek (11.7%) is our favourite as she bids to triumph in the women’s singles at Wimbledon for the first time.
- Elena Rybakina (7.6%) and Aryna Sabalenka (5.4%) are the only other female players given a chance of at least 5%.
The Favourites to Win Wimbledon 2023
Men’s Singles
Novak Djokovic is seen as the man to beat on grass, and rightly so. Only Roger Federer (119) and Jimmy Connors (102) have appeared in 100 or more men’s singles matches at Wimbledon in the Open Era. As long as he reaches the last 16, Djokovic will become the third.
Among active players, Djokovic holds the highest percentage of match wins at Wimbledon for players who have played a minimum of 20 matches at the event (89.6%).
And while our model favours Carlos Alcaraz, that is more because of how brilliant the Spaniard has been rather than any concerns over Djokovic.
The star from Serbia’s experience and track record on the surface means he still has a 19.8% chance of reaching the final. For context, that is higher than Swiatek, who is the clear favourite in the women’s draw.
In Djokovic’s half of the draw, Jannik Sinner, Nick Kyrgios, Denis Shapovalov and Taylor Fritz look like the main threats.
While he is the eighth seed and only has one ATP title to his name this season, Sinner has a 32-10 win-loss record in 2023 and is given a 24.1% chance of making the quarter-finals, a 16.1% shot of making the semis and is a 9.1% hope of reaching the final.
Fitness is the big doubt for big-serving Kyrgios, as he has only played once on tour all year. But he is a formidable opponent on grass and is given a 4.1% chance of going one better than last year’s runner-up spot and a 7.8% chance of making the final again.
Plenty has to happen before then, but in one of his potential paths Djokovic could have to face Kyrgios in the last eight, Sinner in the semis and Alcaraz in the final, not a prospect that would fill him with delight.
Only two players in the Open Era have won the men’s singles at Wimbledon before the age of 21 – Bjorn Borg (1976) and Boris Becker (1985, 1986).
Our supercomputer thinks Alcaraz has an excellent chance of becoming the third man to achieve the feat.
The tournament win on grass at Queen’s Club, where three lively opponents in Alex de Minaur, Sebastian Korda and Grigor Dimitrov were all seen off in straight sets, will have come as a huge boost of confidence for Alcaraz backers.
He now has 11 ATP titles, with wins to his name on all three surfaces, and only turned 20 last month.
Top seed Alcaraz has already gone all the way in a grand slam after his US Open glory and is helped by having no tournament favourites in his quarter of the draw, although Alexander Zverev and Holger Rune are among the possible obstacles before the latter stages.
Potential semi-final opponent Daniil Medvedev, who already has five ATP titles this year, might be the worry for Alcaraz. After being banned last year, the returning Russian has a 6.6% chance of glory – the best of anyone outside the big two.
He has an 11.4% chance of reaching the final and an 19.3% shot at the last four, a likelihood boosted by having Stefanos Tsitsipas in his quarter.
Tsitispas is the fifth seed but has never got beyond the fourth round in London. His chance of making the last eight for the first time is only 12.3% and he is given just a 3.1% shot of making his second major final of the year, having lost to Djokovic in the Australian Open showpiece.
Casper Ruud is another high seed. He has made three career grand slam finals, including two at the French Open. But the Norwegian is yet to prove himself on grass. Despite being seeded fourth, our model ranks him as the 14th most likely winner at 1.5%.
Ruud was beaten by Djokovic in Paris on his favoured surface of clay, and the prospect of getting past past the Serbia star and Sinner in his half of the draw on grass looks daunting. He may not even get that far, with the supercomputer giving Ruud a 58.8% chance of losing inside the first two rounds.
Women’s Singles
While her best performance at Wimbledon is a fourth-round berth in 2021, the supercomputer still likes the chances of Iga Świątek.
The draw has fallen extremely kindly for Świątek and she is given a 11.7% shot of achieving glory, with a clear gap to her closest challengers Elena Rybakina (7.6%) and Aryna Sabalenka (5.4%).
Świątek only needs one win to become one of only three players in the last 25 years have won 62 of their opening 75 matches across all four grand slam events. It would put her in elite company along with Serena Williams and Venus Williams.
She has a 43.9% shot at making the second week, has a 23.7% chance of being in the semis and the figure is a strong 16.9% when it comes to making the final.
It is a huge boost for Świątek to have fourth seed Jessica Pegula in her half of the draw, rather than Rybakina, who will instead battle it out in a fiercely contested bottom half that also contains Australian Open champion Sabalenka, last year’s Wimbledon runner-up Ons Jabeur and Czech threats Petra Kvitová, Karolina Plíšková and Karolina Muchová.
With only nine career wins on grass, Świątek’s track record has been questioned. But among players in the WTA’s current top 20, Pegula (eight) is the one player who has won fewer matches on the surface.
Świątek’s main concerns in the top half will be Coco Gauff and Caroline Garcia.
Gauff is given a 4.8% chance of making the final, seventh overall, with that figure for Garcia being 6.5%, putting the French hope fifth.
Much of the pre-tournament hype has understandably gone towards Świątek , Rybakina and Sabalenka.
However, former champion Kvitová is worthy of attention among the contenders. She is back in the WTA top 10 and won a WTA 500 event in Berlin without dropping a set earlier this month.
She also won on grass at Eastbourne last year and is, of course, a two-time Wimbledon champion. At 4.5%, she is the most likely winner behind the three favourites. Jabeur, meanwhile, is at 3.1% in between Garcia and Gauff in the pre-tournament model.
Any Chance of a British Winner?
With Emma Raducanu out injured and no British players rated among the favourites in either the men’s or women’s draw, you might think there is little for the home fans to get excited about.
But Andy Murray comes into the tournament on impressive form, with successive Challenger Tour titles on grass in Surbiton and Nottingham under his belt.
He also won the Aix-en-Provence in May and reached the final of the Doha Open in February, where it took a player with the class of Medvedev to deny him.
Murray will open his Wimbledon campaign with a matchup against compatriot Ryan Peniston but having narrowly missed out on a seeding he was indeed punished with a tougher draw, as he has a possible second-round clash against Greek fifth seed Stefanos Tsitsipas or Dominic Thiem.
Nonetheless, Murray has a small but not statistically insignificant chance (1.6%) of going all the way to win a third singles title.
While it is low, that is higher than former finalists Matteo Berrettini and Milos Raonic, as well as four of the players seeded in the top 10 – Ruud, Tsitsipas, Andrey Rublev and Frances Tiafoe.
It is also greater than the chance given to the man who beat him at Queen’s, Australian Alex de Minaur, as well as two of his seeded compatriots (12th seed Cameron Norrie and 27th seed Dan Evans).
Murray is the only British player to win the men’s singles at Wimbledon in the Open Era, and 10 years on from his famous first success in 2013, he has hopes of a deep run.
While another win seems like a distant dream, he is given a 39.3% chance of reaching the third round and 22.7% shot of making the last 16.
A quarter-final berth as he is roared on by his home fans is a 13.2% possibility, followed by 6.7% to reach the semi-finals and 3.2% to make it all the way to the final.
With the presence of Murray, former Wimbledon semi-finalist Norrie and Evans in the men’s draw the overall chance of a British male winner in 2023 is 3.5%, according to our model.
Alcaraz and Djokovic ensure Spain (17.6%) and Serbia (13.6%) are the most likely nations to come out on top, followed by the United States (10%). Spain come out on top despite the absence of Rafael Nadal.
With 11 players including Pliskova, Kvitova and Muchova, a Czech winner is most likely in the women’s singles at 12.7%, followed by Poland (11.9%), Russia (11.3%) and USA (10.8%), with the Americans helped by having 19 players in the draw.
World Ranking Projections
Just like at the French Open, Djokovic and Alcaraz will be fighting it out for the world number one spot, as well as Swiatek and Sabalenka in the women’s draw.
This time, though, there are no points to defend as last year’s Wimbledon did not award any in an attempt to be fair to all players after Russian and Belarussian stars were banned from participating.
Alcaraz goes into Wimbledon 2023 as the world number one and is given a 62.0% chance of retaining that position. Djokovic has a 33.7% chance of ending the tournament in top spot, with Medvedev (3.0%) the only other player in with a mathematical chance depending on how the draw plays out.
According to the model, the outcome is more certain on the women’s side. Świątek is the post-Wimbledon world number one in 93.1% of simulations, with Sabalenka (6.9%) the only other player in with a chance.
How Our Tournament Simulator Works:
Our tournament projection model simulates the outcome of the tournament 10,000 times, estimating every player’s likelihood to get through each round of the draw based on their skill strength, where they are in the draw and the skill of the potential opponents they could face.
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