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Wimbledon, the world’s oldest and most prestigious tennis tournament, got underway in London on Monday. While India may not have any representation in the men’s or women’s singles main draw this time around, the country’s top doubles players are putting the final touches to their preparations before the first round kicks off on Wednesday.

Former world No 1 and 2024 Australian Open men’s doubles champion Rohan Bopanna is the most experienced of the four Indians who have made the main draw cut-off. But the 45-year-old is not the country’s top-ranked player at the moment.

That honour goes to 32-year-old Yuki Bhambri, whose world No 35 ranking helped him achieve the 16th seed position along with American partner Robert Galloway (ranked 37th in the world).

After playing with a bunch of different partners in the first three months of the 2025 season, Bhambri joined hands with Galloway in April and the pair enjoyed their most successful outing last week at ATP 250 in Mallorca, where they finished runners-up.

This will be Bhambri’s third main draw appearance in the doubles event at the All England Club and it remains the only Grand Slam he has yet to make the last 16 in the doubles format, something he will be keen on ticking off this year.

The pair will begin their campaign against a tough duo in France’s Manuel Guinard and Monaco’s Romain Arneodo, who made a stirring run to the Monte-Carlo doubles title in April.

“Our preparations have been going well. We played three grass court events and reached the finals in Mallorca so we are looking forward to Wimbledon. It’s a tough first round, they have been Monte-Carlo champions. Definitely, a tricky first round but hopefully we can put our best foot forward and go from strength to strength,” Bhambri told Read from London.

There used to be a time where three of the four Grand Slams were played on grass. But now, only five weeks in the calendar are dedicated for this surface.

The scarcity of playing opportunities on grass is something that Bhambri feels adds to the aura of Wimbledon.

“I think what makes it really special is that you only get to play three or four events on grass in a year. You can play on hard courts or clay throughout the year but that’s not the case with grass. I think the scarcity of grass tournaments makes this one very special,” he said.

While Bhambri will be gunning to make his first Grand Slam doubles quarter-final over the next fortnight, Bopanna, playing in his 17th Wimbledon Championships, will be gunning a bigger milestone.

The Indian has been a three-time men’s doubles semi-finalist at Wimbledon but has never made it to the final in the men’s or mixed doubles here.

Now ranked 49th in the world, Bopanna is partnering Belgium’s Sander Gille, whose best performance at a Major was a runner-up finish at the 2023 French Open.

In their two tournaments together during the grass season so far, Bopanna-Gille won four of their six matches to reach the quarter-finals in Stuttgart and London.

The Indian will be hoping to turn around his mediocre run of form over the past 15 months during which he has not advanced beyond the semi-finals at a doubles event.

Bopanna-Gille will have little time to work their way through the draw as they face off against third seeds Tim Putz-Kevin Krawietz in their opener.

The German pair won the doubles title at the ATP Finals in November and in Halle last week and also reached the final of the US Open in September.

Sriram Balaji, India’s No 3 ranked doubles player at No. 74 in the world, is competing alongside Mexico’s Miguel Reyes-Varela. They have been playing regularly since the start of the 2025 season.

The pair reached their first final of the year at an ATP Challenger event in clay in Macedonia last month. Playing in his fourth main draw appearance at Wimbledon, the 35-year-old Indian will be hoping to win back-to-back main draw matches for the first time at the All England Club.

To achieve that, Balaji-Varela will have to get past the American duo Learner Tien-Aleksander Kovacevic in the first round and potentially the No. 4 seeds and recent French Open champions Marcel Granollers-Horacio Zeballos in the second round.

At 24, Rithvik Choudary Bollipalli is the youngest of the four Indians in the Wimbledon doubles draw.

The 6ft 2 inch tall Bollipalli has just graduated to the Grand Slam level this season and is playing his third Grand Slam main draw in a row with Colombian partner Nicolas Barrientos. The pair won their first title together in Santiago on clay in February.

The duo will square off against David Goffin-Alexandre Muller in the first round and have sixth seeds Joe Salisbury-Neal Skupski, who have five men’s doubles Grand Slams between them and reached the final in Paris last month, as potential opponents in the second round.

Wimbledon is perhaps the Grand Slam tournament most widely entrenched in the Indian tennis fan’s consciousness, partly due to its legacy and partly due to success there in recent decades – five doubles titles for Leander Paes, three for Mahesh Bhupathi and one for Sania Mirza.

Bhambri, Bopanna, Balaji and Bollipalli will hope to add to that legacy over the next two weeks at SW 19.

Where to Watch Wimbledon 2025?

You can catch all the LIVE action from 2025 Wimbledon on the Star Sports Network in India.

Alternatively, you can also stream all the action from the tournament on JioHotstar.