Australia will have a genuine contender for glory at Wimbledon, with Alex de Minaur having recently made progress towards being a potential future Grand Slam winner.
Nick Kyrgios reached the men's final at SW19 as recently as 2022, but the last Aussie to lift the trophy on the hallowed grass was Lleyton Hewitt back in 2002.
In the women's draw there is little prospect of a genuine Australian challenge for glory, despite Ash Barty having triumphed at Wimbledon as recently as 2021.
De Minaur sparks hopes of Wimbledon glory
De Minaur appears to have been on the cusp of a big breakthrough for some time, but there are definite signs that he has made further progress towards the very pinnacle of the sport.
Having made the US Open quarter-finals back in 2020, the 25-year-old Sydney native had struggled to match that run at the Grand Slams ever since, although he had made round four at all of the other three majors.
That changed, of all places, at the French Open earlier this year, with De Minaur making it through to the last eight in Paris - having previously never been any further than the second round.
His run included a superb four-set victory over fifth seed and former US Open champion Daniil Medvedev in the fourth round, before eventual beaten finalist Alex Zverev ended his hopes with a straight-sets victory in the quarters.
A matter of weeks earlier at the Barcelona Open, De Minaur had upset the applecart by defeating home hero Rafa Nadal, who took revenge at the Madrid Masters the following week.
De Minaur had also made round four at his home Australian Open for the third time in a row at the start of 2024, so this is already the strongest year of his career.
More recently he made it through to the final of the Rosmalen Tennis Championship, showing good form on the grass which could be crucial for his Wimbledon hopes, which were ended 12 months ago in the second round by former finalist Matteo Berrettini.
De Minaur - who is set to be seeded inside the top 10 - is currently a 31.00 shot to triumph at SW19, with the outright market headed by defending champion Carlos Alcaraz at 2.37 and Jannik Sinner at 2.62.
There will be other Aussies in the Wimbledon draw, of course, but none will be possible champions, with Christopher O'Connell the only Aussie to have made round three last year.
Hewitt's success in 2002 came amidst a run of four straight Wimbledon finals which featured an Aussie, but Kyrgios is the only Australian to have got that far since then.
De Minaur will hold genuine hopes that he can go deep at Wimbledon, with ultimate glory certainly not out of the question.
Women's cupboard remains bare
While De Minaur offers a genuine prospect of Australian success on the men's draw at SW19, there is no such hope in the women's section.
Barty triumphed at Wimbledon as recently as 2021, but her retirement from the sport has left a major hole in the Aussie women's set-up, with Storm Hunter and Daria Saville both unable to make it past their SW19 openers last year.
Saville, at 84, is the only Australian women currently ranked inside the world's top 100, while Alja Tomljanovic is down at 189 as she continues her comeback from a string of injury problems.
Tomljanovic was forced to miss Wimbledon in 2023, but she made it all the way to the quarter-finals in both of the preceding two years, so she has grasscourt pedigree which could yet mean that she impresses again in the English capital.
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