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Serena Williams will face Australia’s Maja Joint at Wimbledon in her long-awaited return to singles competition after four years of retirement, a match between two players born nearly 25 years apart.

Joint, a talented 20-year-old who won Eastbourne last year, has struggled badly with this year, compiling a 3-15 record. The winner of their first round match could face the in-form Filipino 25th seed, Alexandra Eala.

A meeting with Iga Swiatek, the third seed and defending champion, awaits in round three, with the Pole opening her title defence against Taylor Townsend. They have been drawn in the bottom half of the draw, which is headed by Elena Rybakina.

Williams has not competed in singles since she officially retired from professional tennis at the US Open in 2022. There had been ample speculation surrounding her comeback since December, when the 44-year-old reappeared in the drug testing pool. Williams first returned in doubles at the Queen’s Club this month, before the championships announced at the eleventh hour on Sunday that she had taken the final wildcard into the women’s singles draw.

Williams has also received a women’s doubles wildcard with her sister, Venus, a tournament they have won six times together. Serena Williams is a seven-time Wimbledon singles champion and a 23-time grand slam singles champion.

The British players Emma Raducanu and Jack Draper, meanwhile, have both been dealt tough draws. The dramatic groans in the media theatre on Friday morning at the All England Club were more than appropriate when Draper was lifted from the hat to face Taylor Fritz, the sixth seed, in the first round.

While the majority of players in the draw are already focused on the upcoming tournament, Draper has had other business to attend to this week.

After entering Wimbledon last year ranked No 4, a potential candidate to disrupt the duopoly between Sinner and Alcaraz, he is now ranked No 160. A bone bruise to his playing arm kept him out for around seven months and knee tendonitis, a second chronic injury, sidelined him for two and a half months until this week.

In his first tournament back at Eastbourne this week, things have gone very well. Draper reached the semi-finals, where he was beaten 7-5 6-3 by the No 6 seed, Ugo Humbert. Draper performed at a high level from the beginning of the tournament and, most importantly, looked healthy. However, he now finds himself in a tricky position. After being so inactive over the past year, four matches in a week represent a dramatic increase in his physical load.

Draper’s primary goal for the foreseeable future must be to remain healthy and with a best-of-five-set match against a top player to come, he must manage himself carefully.

While Draper is suddenly everywhere, competing in the semi-final of one tournament while being part of one of the headline first-round matches in another, Emma Raducanu has been conspicuous in her absence from the All England Club over the past few days. She will train on-site at Wimbledon on Saturday for the first time after being spotted leaving the grounds wearing a medical boot.

Considering how well she performed at the Queen’s Club earlier this month, rolling through quality opposition to reach the final and producing some of the best tennis of her career throughout, the buildup to this year’s Wimbledon should have been an enjoyable experience for Raducanu to savour. However, there is always an injury around the corner. Her frailty and injury-proneness means she is once again preoccupied by physical issues and it is unclear exactly what condition she will be in for the tournament.

She cannot afford to be anything but at her best physically. If she is healthy, Raducanu will be heavily favoured to defeat her first-round opponent Antonia Ruzic but a potential second-round match with Jelena Ostapenko, the former French Open champion and a former semi-finalist here, awaits. Another win could put her up against the world number one Aryna Sabalenka for a second consecutive year.

While Raducanu and Draper have dealt with their various injury issues, for much of the past year Cameron Norrie has been the most consistent and impressive presence on the tour.

However, one year on from his impressive quarter-final run, the 26th seed arrives with his own challenges. Norrie’s positive progress was disrupted by a rib injury before the French Open. He has played just one match in the grass court season, losing his first-round match to Alejandro Davidovich Fokina.

In total, there will be 21 British players competing at Wimbledon, including an impressive three qualifiers in Oliver Tarvet, who advanced through three rounds of qualifying for a second consecutive year, Max Basing and Billy Harris. Although few draws were as shocking as Draper’s, fate did not smile on many of the British players in the media theatre. A total of 58% of the British players were drawn against top 50 opponents, with numerous match-ups coming against current or former top-10 players.

Elsewhere, in the men’s draw, Novak Djokovic has been drawn into Jannik Sinner’s half of the men’s singles draw as he continues to chase an unprecedented 25th grand slam singles title. Djokovic, a seven-time champion, will open his tournament against China’s Wu Yibing. In round two he could face a slumping Stefanos Tsitsipas, who is currently ranked No 88. The two players previously have faced each other in two grand slam finals.

A month after his shocking collapse in the second round of the French Open, Sinner will begin his title defence against Miomir Kecmanovic of Serbia. The third seed, Félix Auger-Aliassime of Canada, is the highest-ranked player in the Italian world No 1’s half of the draw. The French Open champion, Alexander Zverev, seeded second, and Ben Shelton, the fourth seed, head the wide-open bottom half of the men’s draw.