Article now on the Wimbledon site, including comments from Eaton. http://www.wimbledon.org/en_GB/news/articles/2008-06-19/200806191213917139640.html

Is that really the reporter's name?

-- Edited by The Hoose at 17:34, 2008-06-19

Anyway, I've been stuck on endless phone calls since the matches ended but what a result from Chris.  As were saying before, he's been playing way above his ranking this grass court season without any real reward, but he's certainly got his reward for this run!

Interestingly (since you won't be big-headed enough to tell you this herself) Bethan told me after a tournament she went to last year that she was more impressed with Chris than with Wardy, though clearly those two have quite different court preferences.

Before we get too excited, what usually happens when a Brit qualifies for a slam is that they get a 12 month ranking boost from it but don't really push on, then they have these 20 points to come off hanging over their heads like a guillotine a year later. Indeed Lee Childs, our only qualifier last year, didn't even last the rest of the year before he retired!

However, it doesn't have to be that way - Chris is younger than our other recent Wimbledon qualifiers have been and he's now going to get more DAs/higher seedings in Futures. As I said earlier, after Wimby, he will only have three points to come off in the next three months, so he has a real chance to move into the top 500 and beyond. His aim should be to be getting DAs to the lower level Challengers by this time next year, because at that level losing 20 points won't hurt so much.

As for Bloomers though, how sad was that outcome.  I was amazed at how well he fought back from two sets down and it really looked like it was going to go his way once he got a break in the 4th and seemed to be well on top. If he had won, I think we'd be saying now that it was his best-ever win by a long way, given how much he had to fight and what was at stake, so it must have been devastating to lose, especially after having had a match point. Still, he has pretty much proved that he can survive five sets and that he never gives up!

Richard doesn't have a tendency to choke in the same way as some of the GB players do, so I kind of hope that Peya just aced him on the break points in the 5th so that this loss won't haunt him too much, because in reality he's had a really good grass court season.

I also hope that the doubles doesn't get delayed because of the weather at Wimby this year so that those involved either go deep into the draw or get to play in the Dublin Challenger.

-- Edited by steven at 17:30, 2008-06-19

Thoroughly, thoroughly impressed by Chris! If you'd asked me to put money on one of the two getting through, my money would have been on Bloomers in all honesty but this is why I don't bet!!! To use an Aussie term: "you little ripper!"

What are the chances any of this gets mentioned at all on the BBC on Monday?

And what are the chances Tim commentates if his match gets on TV?

So Steven is Chris the lowest ranked player to Qualify for Wimbledon...or indeed any Grand Slam ?

Well done to Eaton. Three cracking wins and he truly deserves his place in the main draw. I hope he gets a decent first round draw as he has nothing to lose and can really go for it. Hopefully it'll be a low ranked clay courter who hates grass. Such a pity about Bloomfield as he had the match within his grasp in that last set. Really should have won.

Thanks DJ, that's interesting to see. This is one of the tables in my stats collection (see http://www.britishtennis.net/stats/mv-m.htm?n=1 ) but I haven't updated it since February - when I get around to converting the tables to make it easier to feed the rankings in each week, I should be able to update it on a regular basis.

----

Worryingly, on the list of qualifiers at http://www.wimbledon.org/en_GB/news/articles/2008-06-19/200806191213879329546.html, it states:

LL - denotes 'Lucky Loser'.
Lucky losers are losers from the final round of qualifying competitions chosen in order of world rankings to fill any vacancy which occurs in the draw before the first round has been completed.

I'm sure that's only true for ATP events and that it changed to random for slams a couple of years ago, but I might be missing something because you'd think the Wimby referee's office would know the LL rules that apply to their own tournament, wouldn't you?

----

Drew wrote:

---

So Steven is Chris the lowest ranked player to Qualify for Wimbledon...or indeed any Grand Slam ?

---

I'm working on it - this is not an easy one! LOL


-- Edited by steven at 19:51, 2008-06-19

Lucky losers

Ah, found the ITF grand slam rulebook.

The real lucky loser rule for grand slams is that the four highest-ranked FQR losers go into a random draw to prevent tanking, but once they are all in, any additional LL places are given to FQR losers in ranking order.

I fear that's the end of Bloomers' hopes for a LL place then. 

Edit!

Scrap that - the Google search brought up the 2006 ITF grand slam rulebook. In the 2008 version at http://www.itftennis.com/shared/medialibrary/pdf/original/IO_30332_original.PDF it says that the LLs will be drawn at random from all FQR losers.

I just hope the Andrew Jarrett (the Wimbledon referee) knows this and wasn't responsible for what it says on the Wimbledon site!

Lowest-ranked slam qualifiers

I very much doubt that Chris is the lowest-ranked slam qualifier, but I've given up trying to find a counter-example - the way the slams publish their results makes it like looking for a needle in a haystack.

-- Edited by steven at 20:25, 2008-06-19

-- Edited by steven at 20:34, 2008-06-19