Every year when the Wimbledon draw is released, you hear talk of “seeds”: the number one seed, the top seeds, unseeded dark horses. But what exactly is a seed, how are they decided, and why does Wimbledon have such a famously unusual history with seeding? For a tournament steeped in tradition, the way it ranks and protects its best players is one of its most interesting quirks.
In simple terms, seeding is a system that ranks the strongest players and spreads them across the draw so the best do not meet until the later rounds. Wimbledon has 32 seeds in both the men’s and women’s singles, and for decades it was the only Grand Slam that used its own special grass-court formula to decide the order, a system it finally retired in 2021. Understanding seeding is the key to reading any Wimbledon draw.
The chart below explains how Wimbledon seeding works, the famous old grass-court formula, how seeds are placed in the draw, and the memorable seeding stories over the years. Take a look, then we’ll break it all down.
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What a seed actually is
A seed is simply a top-ranked player who is given a protected position in the draw. The whole point of seeding is to prevent the best players from being randomly drawn against each other in the early rounds, which would knock out contenders before the tournament really gets going. Instead, the top players are spread evenly across the bracket so that, in theory, the strongest survive to meet in the most important matches. Wimbledon, like the other three Grand Slams, uses 32 seeds in both the men’s and women’s singles draws of 128 players.
The numbering matters: the number one seed is the highest-ranked player in the field, the number two seed the next, and so on down to 32. The system guarantees that two seeded players cannot meet before the third round, and that the very top seeds are kept apart even longer. The remaining 96 players in the draw are unseeded and are placed randomly, which is where the upsets and Cinderella runs come from.
How seeds are decided today
Since 2021, Wimbledon’s men’s seeding follows the ATP world rankings exactly: the top 32 entered players are seeded in the precise order they sit in the rankings. The women’s seeding follows the WTA rankings in the same way, though the All England Club technically reserves the right to adjust the order within the 32 to produce a “balanced draw”, a power it rarely uses in practice. The cut-off is the rankings published on the Monday of qualifying week, about a week before the main draw begins.
Occasionally a player’s seed can be higher than their actual ranking if higher-ranked players withdraw before the tournament. For example, if the world number two pulls out, everyone below moves up a seed line. This is straightforward today, but for nearly two decades, Wimbledon did something far more unusual, and far more controversial.
The famous grass-court formula
From 2002 to 2019, Wimbledon was the only Grand Slam that used its own special formula to decide the seeding order. It still seeded the top 32 ranked players, but it re-ordered them using a grass-specific calculation: a player’s ranking points, plus 100 percent of the points they had earned on grass over the previous 12 months, plus 75 percent of the points from their best grass-court result in the 12 months before that. The idea was that grass is a unique surface, and players who excelled on it deserved a higher seeding than their all-surface ranking alone might suggest.
This formula produced some memorable results. In 2019, it elevated Roger Federer, an eight-time Wimbledon champion ranked third in the world, above world number two Rafael Nadal, seeding Federer second. That put the two legends in opposite halves and sparked plenty of debate, with Nadal publicly noting that Wimbledon was the only event to do things its own way. The All England Club retired the formula in 2021, explaining that the modern homogenisation of court surfaces meant the grass-court adjustment had “served its time.”
How seeds are placed in the bracket
Once the 32 seeds are set, they are slotted into fixed positions in the 128-player draw to keep them apart. The number one and number two seeds are placed at opposite ends of the bracket, meaning they can only possibly meet in the final. Seeds three and four are drawn into the two remaining quarters, so the top four are split across the four quarters and cannot meet before the semifinals. Seeds five through eight are spread into the eighths, and the lower seeds are distributed by drawn lots through progressively smaller sections.
Everyone else, the unseeded players, qualifiers, and wildcards, is then drawn randomly into the open spots. This is why an unseeded player has roughly a one-in-three chance of facing a seed in the very first round, and why a dangerous “floater”, an unseeded player with real grass-court pedigree, can completely change the outlook of a section of the draw. It is also why fans pore over the bracket the moment it is released, tracing the potential path of their favorite player to the final.
When seeds fail: the great upsets
Seeding is designed to protect the best players, but tennis does not always cooperate, and that is part of the magic. In the entire history of Wimbledon, only three unseeded players have ever won the singles title. On the men’s side, Boris Becker did it as a 17-year-old in 1985 and Goran Ivanišević famously won as a wildcard in 2001. On the women’s side, Markéta Vondroušová became the first unseeded women’s champion in 2023, beating Ons Jabeur in the final.
These rare runs are exactly why fans love the draw: no matter how carefully the seeds are arranged, an unseeded player on a hot streak can topple the favorites one by one. Seeding tilts the odds toward the best players, but it guarantees nothing, which is what keeps two weeks of Wimbledon endlessly compelling.
Final Word
Wimbledon seeding is the system that ranks the top 32 players in each singles draw and spreads them out so the best are kept apart until the later rounds, with the number one and two seeds unable to meet before the final. Since 2021, the men’s order has simply followed the ATP rankings, ending the famous grass-court formula that for years re-ordered the seeds and produced talking points like Federer leapfrogging Nadal in 2019.
Understanding seeds is the key to reading any Wimbledon draw and spotting where the upsets might come from. For more on the tournament, see our look at the longest Wimbledon match ever played.