Her 6-4, 6-2 exit against Jessica Bouzas Maneiro at the All England Club made Vondrousova the first defending women’s champion there to lose in the first round the next year since 1994—and only the second in the sport’s Open era, which began in 1968. The only other women’s returning champ to bow out immediately at Wimbledon was Steffi Graf.
Vondrousova was the runner-up at the French Open as a teenager in 2019, and she took home a silver medal from the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, before her milestone championship at Wimbledon in 2023, when she became the first unseeded female singles title winner at the grass-court major.
But her career repeatedly has been interrupted by injuries. In 2022, for example, Vondrousova sat out from April to October because she had two operations on her left wrist after a stress fracture left bone fragments in two different spots.
Once ranked as high as No. 6, she currently is No. 45.
“Stepping out of the court again. I am still struggling with (a) shoulder injury,” Vondrousova wrote Thursday. “Although it’s not easy, I now have a few months of intensive training and rehabilitation to get my arm back together.”
