Alex de Minaur gets crack at Novak Djokovic a year after hip tear prevented Wimbledon clash

For most of Wimbledon history, the dividing line between the first and second week was very clear. It came on Middle Sunday, when there was no play, and which led to Manic Monday, the busy start to week two.

Now Wimbledon has bowed to the 21st century—as well as the 20th—and eliminated its off-day for religious observances. Sunday and Monday have normal schedules like the rest, and week one bleeds right into week two.

Still, today marked the sixth day of the event, and the end of week one.

For two of the those days, it looked as if upsets would define this year’s tournament—23 seeds went out in the first round. Since then some sense of order has been restored, at least among the top tier. The five best players of recent years—Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek, and Novak Djokovic—are all alive.

There were no major shocks on Saturday, either. But new players keep advancing, and new stories keep developing. Here’s a look at three of them.

12 months later, Alex De Minaur finally gets his crack at Novak Djokovic

No one who saw it will ever forget the look on Alex De Minaur’s face as he finished his fourth-round win over Arthur Fils at Wimbledon last year. Instead of celebrating a career milestone—his first Wimbledon quarterfinal in seven tries—he shot his team a look so ominous that it could have meant only one thing: He had injured himself while winning the match. A hip tear is what it turned out to be, and he was right to fear the worst. The Australian was forced to withdraw from his quarter with Novak Djokovic, and from the Paris Olympics later that month.

But De Minaur didn’t stay down for long. He was back in the quarters again at the US Open, and he has kept his ranking hovering around the Top 10 since. Now, 12 months later, he’ll get that shot at Djokovic.

“It was a brutal time for me last year having to deal with all of those emotions,” De Minaur said after his third-round win on Saturday. “But here we are a year later feeling good, ready to go, and I’m going to get my chance again.”

Of course, facing Djokovic may not be the ideal fourth round, but De Minaur says this is what he plays for.

“It’s exciting,” he says. “These are the matches you want to be playing in. You don’t want to go through a draw or a Grand Slam and feel like everything has been handed to you.”

De Minaur hasn’t dropped a set so far, a fact that isn’t lost on Djokovic.

“You’re not super excited to play Alex de Minaur on grass, that’s for sure, because he’s so quick and he’s complete player, all around,” Djokovic says.

Djokovic is 2-1 against De Minaur, and will be favored again. When the tournament began, the seven-time champ was a (slight) afterthought. After Paris, the spotlight was aimed firmly on Alcaraz and Sinner. Since then, though, Djokovic has won three matches routinely. Perhaps even better, he has watched as three potentially dangerous opponents, Jack Draper, Alexander Bublik, and Jakub Mensik, have all dropped out of his section of the draw. His demolition of Miomir Kecmanovic on Centre Court on Saturday felt like a statement. For De Minaur, just being able to compete this time will be a good start.

Admin Gets Access to the 2nd Week

Flavio Cobolli isn’t the best—he’s ranked 24th—or anything close to the most famous player. He’s only third fiddle among his fellow Italians, after Jannik Sinner and Lorenzo Musetti.

But for a certain type of highly online tennis fan, his face has been one of the most visible in men’s tennis this year. Since the spring, the 23-year-old has become the “Admin” for the ATP’s social media feeds. Basically, he ambles through the backstages at tournaments, shows us their inner workings, and chats in his easygoing way with whoever happens by.

It seems to be working for him. Cobolli made his Admin debut in Hamburg in May, and ended up winning the biggest title of his career. Now he’s at a career-high No. 24.

“I start the year very bad,” Cobolli says, “and one big victory like in Bucharest or in Hamburg makes me something in my stomach, you know, it change a lot.”

All of that said, he wasn’t supposed to be able to access the second week, not in his stacked section of the draw, and not on grass. The seeds near him included Draper, Bublik, and Mensik. But Draper and Bublik were gone by the second round, and on Saturday Cobolli made amazingly quick work of Mensik.

Three months ago, when he won the title in Miami over Djokovic, the huge-serving, 19-year-old Czech looked like he be would be someone to fear on Wimbledon grass. Not today, not by Cobolli.

It was the Italian clay-courter, despite giving up a few inches in height and a few miles per hour of serve speed to Mensik, who was in command throughout. He clocked serves in the 130s and cracked nine aces. He hit 36 winners to Mensik’s 24. He earned 17 break points and faced just one.

That one break point is worth highlighting. It came when Cobolli was serving for the second set at 5-4, and had made a few rare errors; one more and Mensik was back in it. Instead, Cobolli jumped all over a mid-court forehand and fired it for an immediate winner.

“I think I played one of the best matches ever of my life,” said Cobolli, who meets Marin Cilic next. “I think almost perfect.”

“Three years ago I completely hate the grass,” he admitted. “I think now it makes me happy.”

Clara Tauson wins her first match at Wimbledon—then wins three more for good measure

Clara Tauson isn’t what you would call a smiley player. When things aren’t going her way, the towering, 22-year-old Dane can look like she’d rather be anywhere else than on a tennis court. In these moments, “grudging” might be the best way to describe her mood as she slowly moves from one point to another.

So you know she was feeling good when, after hitting a scrambling stab winner in the first-set tiebreaker against Elena Rybakina on Saturday, Tauson lifted her hands above her head, fist-pumped, and even broke into something resembling a smile. Why wouldn’t she be pleased? After losing in the first round at Wimbledon on each of her three previous trips, she had a chance to make the second week, and was holding her own with the 2022 champ.

“I never expected it,” Tauson said. “I’ve never had very good results on grass. I came here with a little bit of confidence of, yeah, making it a few rounds. But winning against Elena was definitely going to be a tough job, and it was.”

Tauson managed to pull it off, she said, by playing “some of my very best tennis.”

The match was a battle of six-footers, and two players with strong serves who much prefer offense to defense. The points were short and sharp, but the games and sets were long, back-and-forth, and hard-fought. Tauson showed off the fitness that she has improved, and the finesse that she has developed, to go with her heavily-struck ground strokes.

The crucial shot was the scrambling winner that I mentioned above. It came when she was down 3-5 in the first-set tiebreaker and appeared to be on the ropes. Saving that point kept her alive, and she turned the breaker and the match in her favor from there.

“My slice was working really good today,” she said. “I was hitting all the spots that I wanted. It’s not often that it works like that. It was a good thing for me to mix it up today because when you give Elena the big power, she’s going to hit it even harder back at you.”

Tauson was a No. 1 junior, but it wasn’t until this season that she began to make good on that potential. She 27-13 in 2025, has won a title, has beaten Aryna Sabalenka, and is a career-high No. 22. She credits much of her improvement to her work with her coach, Kasper Elvad. They started last fall, and like Madison Keys and her coach-husband, Bjorn Fratangelo, they’re also in a personal relationship.

“It’s sometimes a hard thing to do, but I think it’s been really easy for us because we trust each other a lot, both skills-wise and also in life,” Tauson says. “We do everything with as much care as we can and try to do our very best, both of us, every single day.

“Just having someone in my corner that I know who believes I can win no matter the score and no matter how it looks.”

Tauson will likely need her best again on Monday, when she faces Iga Swiatek.