Young guns, fading stars and honest journeymen battled it out from Monday to Thursday at this year’s Wimbledon Qualifying tournament for the chance of a shot at glory at the All England Club next week.
Among them were Jimmy Wang and Chan Chin-wei, Taiwan’s sole representatives among the more than 200 players competing in Roehampton in southwest London.
Players in the singles events played three rounds on the grass courts of the plush Bank of England Sports Grounds for a place in the main Wimbledon draw.
Photo: Tony Phillips, Taipei Times
There was no single winner, instead players who won all three rounds — 16 in the men’s singles and 12 in the women’s singles — progressed, along with four pairs in each of the women’s and men’s doubles events, which only had two rounds.
A host of big names have graced past Wimbledon tournaments and perhaps the most famous journey from qualifying to the championships was in 1977, when an 18-year-old New Yorker called John McEnroe battled his way in to the main draw.
Once there, he kept on going, eventually reaching the semi-final, before he was beaten by Jimmy Connors.
No qualifier has ever won either of the Wimbledon singles titles, but in 2000 Vladimir Voltchkov matched McEnroe’s feat in the men’s competition, while Alexandra Stevenson made it as far as the semi-finals of the women’s tournament in 1999.
Every year, qualifying throws up interesting stories as players fight for the chance of a show court appearance against the likes of Roger Federer or Serena Williams a week later.
Lukas Rosol repeatedly failed to negotiate his way through qualifying before finally making it in 2012.
After a first-round win, the Czech faced Rafael Nadal on Centre Court, defeating the Spanish superstar in a five-set thriller and creating one of the greatest upsets in modern tennis history before losing in the next round.
A year ago, Steve Darcis was celebrating the biggest win of his career after downing Nadal in the first round at the All England Club.
Yet ecstasy turned to agony when injury prevented Darcis from playing his second-round match.
The subsequent 12 months have been blighted by injury and the Belgian’s ranking plunged so far that he needed a wild-card entry at Roehampton.
“Last year was maybe the best moment of my career, and at the same time maybe the worst one,” Darcis told the official Wimbledon Web site after his first round win on Monday. “It’s been like 12 months, very, very tough, especially the first two months, with a lot of pain. Now I’m enjoying being back on the court and very lucky to get the wild card in qualies.”
His luck ran out on Tuesday as he lost to German Daniel Brands in three sets.
Wang is another player who has suffered more than his fair share of injuries recently, but he managed to shrug off slow starts in all three of his matches this week to earn a place in the main draw.
The 29-year-old lost the opening set in his first-round encounter with Thomas Fabbiano of Italy before making a strong comeback to win 2-6, 6-3, 6-1.
His second match followed a similar pattern as he beat China’s Zhang Ze 4-6, 6-3, 6-0 and he secured his place in the main draw by downing 10th-seeded Canadian Frank Dancevic 2-6, 6-2, 6-1, 6-4.
“I’m like an old engine car. I just need to warm up more,” Wang told the Taipei Times, tongue-in-cheek, of his first-set travails.
Joking aside, the No. 23 seed at Roehampton believes qualifying for Wimbledon poses a unique challenge.
“This is different to other Slams [qualifying tournaments],” he said following his defeat of Zhang on Tuesday. “In the final round of qualifying you play the best of five sets ... everything is best-of-three in other Grand Slams and it’s not easy to qualify for Wimbledon.”
“You stay out there longer in tough conditions. It can be windy, the weather’s not so stable, everything, but I enjoy it and that’s the most important thing,” Wang said.
“In 2012, the first round of qualifying, I finished really late and they put me last match again in the second round,” he said. “I finished, like probably, 8pm, 9pm, something like that, and normally I get a day off on Wednesday and they said: ‘No, it’s going to be raining on Wednesday and Thursday so you have to play tomorrow.’”
“I was like, wow, three days in a row. I don’t know how many sets I played maybe seven, eight, nine sets in three days, so I needed three days off afterward,” Wang said.
The other Taiwanese in action at Roehampton, Chan Chin-wei, teamed up with China’s Xu Yi-fan to beat Lara Arruabarrena of Spain and Romanian Alexandra Dulgheru 5-7, 6-2, 6-3 in the first round of the Women’s Doubles, but they then lost in straight sets to Pauline Parmentier and Laura Thorpe of France on Thursday.
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