Only the cream of the crop rises to the top at Wimbledon.
If you look through the list of men’s champions at the All-England Club, you don’t point at any names and wonder, “How did this guy win Wimbledon?”
There aren’t any surprise champions at the All-England Club, but there are champions who win at surprising times. The list of the five most surprising men’s champions in Wimbledon history features familiar names who swept through the draw when it was least expected.
Who were the most surprising Wimbledon men’s champions?
5 – Novak Djokovic (2018)
It seems strange in retrospect to see the all-time leader in men’s major titles listed as a surprise Wimbledon champion. Trust me. No one saw this coming in the early summer of 2018.
Djokovic hadn’t won a slam since the 2016 French Open. He hadn’t won a tournament of any kind in more than a year. He had undergone elbow surgery just five months earlier. He did reach the quarterfinals of the 2018 French Open but lost to the unheralded Marco Cecchinato. He didn’t seem anywhere near Grand Slam champion form.
Djokovic was seeded 12th for Wimbledon and was 21st in the world rankings. He caught a break in the draw, landing in a quarter that didn’t include any other proven, consistent grass-court players.
The key match was the semifinal against Rafael Nadal. It took two days and more than five hours of play to determine a winner, with Djokovic prevailing 10-8 in the fifth set.
Djokovic caught another break in the title match. The other finalist, Kevin Anderson, seemed worn out from his semifinal win against John Isner that went to 26-24 in the fifth set. Djokovic rolled to a three-set win for his fourth Wimbledon title and the most unlikely of his 24 major titles.
4 – Andre Agassi (1992)
Agassi’s win defied the trends of the time. Serve-and-volleyers dominated Wimbledon in the 1980s and 1990s. Agassi was the only baseliner to win at the All-England Club between 1983 and 2001.
Favorites generally won at Wimbledon. At No. 12, Agassi was the worst seed of any seeded champion at the time.
This was one of the least successful stretches of Agassi’s career. The 1992 Wimbledon final was the only Slam final he reached between the summer of 1991 and the fall of 1994.
Agassi got through the first four rounds on the strength of a 6-1 record in sets decided by 7-6 or 7-5 scores. He knocked out Boris Becker, who had played in six of the previous seven Wimbledon finals, in a five-set quarterfinal.
The final against Goran Ivanišević also went five sets. Agassi got aced 37 times – Agassi served just 37 aces of his own in the entire tournament – but took advantage of two Ivanišević double-faults in the final game to win the title 6-4 in the fifth.
3 – Richard Krajicek (1996)
The 1996 Wimbledon draw was littered with upsets. The biggest was Krajicek’s straight-set shocker against top seed and three-time defending champion Pete Sampras in the quarterfinals.
With his victory against Sampras plus his win against 1991 champion Michael Stich in the previous round, Krajicek essentially cleared his own path to his surprise title. Seven of the top 10 seeds had been eliminated in the first three rounds.
After beating Sampras, Krajicek rolled past unseeded players in the final two rounds – Jason Stoltenberg in the semifinals and MaliVai Washington in the final.
Krajicek was considered the No. 17 seed – a replacement seed for an injured seeded player – in the days when Grand Slams had just 16 seeds. No other seeded player seeded No. 17 or worse has won Wimbledon.
2 - Goran Ivanisevic (2001)
Ivanisevic is still the worst-ranked player (No. 125) and the only wild card to win Wimbledon. Why isn’t he No. 1 on this list? Ivanisevic was a three-time Wimbledon runner-up whose ranking sagged primarily due to injury. It wasn’t a surprise that Ivanisevic won Wimbledon. It was just a surprise which year he finally did it.
When Ivanisevic walloped an on-the-rise Andy Roddick in the third round, it was clear that he was a threat to win the whole tournament. (It helped that seven-time champion Sampras, who had twice beaten Ivanisevic in the final, was eliminated one round earlier).
Ivanisevic truly earned his elusive Wimbledon trophy. He beat No. 4 seed Marat Safin in the quarterfinals. He overcame a two-sets-to-one deficit against home county favorite Tim Henman in the semifinals. He outlasted No. 3 seed Patrick Rafter by a 9-7 score in the fifth set in a raucous final that was delayed until Monday due to a rainy final weekend at the All-England Club.
It was the last tournament title of Ivanisevic’s career (though he was indirectly part of many more Grand Slam titles as Djokovic's longtime coach).
1 – Boris Becker (1985)
There were hints. Becker was a talented young player on the rise in the summer of 1985. His victory at the pre-Wimbledon grass-court tune-up at Queens Club boosted his ranking to No. 20 in the world.
“If he plays like that,” said Johan Kriek, Becker’s foe in the Queen’s final, “he’ll win Wimbledon.”
He played like that. And he won Wimbledon.
Becker’s key matches were five-set wins against No. 7 seed Joakim Nystrom in the third round and against No. 16 seed Tim Mayotte in the fourth round. Kevin Curren gave Becker a bit of an assist by taking out John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors – the champion and runner-up the previous year – in the quarterfinals and semifinals.
But Curren was no match for Becker in a four-set final in a battle of big servers that ushered in the modern age of big-hitting tennis.
It seems obvious in retrospect that Becker was the best grass-court player in the world by the summer of 1985. Remember, however, that Becker was just 17 years old. He should have been going into his senior year of high school.
He’s still the youngest Wimbledon winner. And remember that no unseeded player had ever won Wimbledon at that time. Becker was the best player in the field, but his win should still be remembered as the most surprising in the tournament’s history.
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