How many wildcards can be handed out?

How many have been handed out?

Guys, it's over. James isn't playing wimby this year.
Sucks, but that's it. No point in baseless speculation.

Maza1987 wrote:

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Guys, it's over. James isn't playing wimby this year.
Sucks, but that's it. No point in baseless speculation.

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Ha, there may only be 5 WCs but there is few days left yet.  So much can happen, every step they've got to watch, who's behind them, what's in front of them, what's round the next corner.  They need to be verrry careful... 

Anyway, I think the "baseless speculation"  has just beeen helpfully arriving at the facts re what withdrawals  could give James a way in.  We ssem to have arrived at just the 5 "true" WCs and yes, withdrawal of one of these is pretty unlikely.  But often some WCs ( as here ) are players who are not where their talent could get them due to injury and injury can reoccur. Indeed Nishikori seems to have some issues, even although it looks as if he will be OK.

seagull wrote:

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LTA really screwed up by announcing so early they were not using all of the Wild Cards. Could have left one for this sort of scenario

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I think this is the crux of the matter, but maybe they had to (or thought they had to) do it before qualifying started so that players on the alt list for the main draw would know whether they had to play qualifying or not, and maybe they then thought they'd better announce it on the Friday so that players scraping into the main draw through the wasted WC places could play Eastbourne qualifying if they wanted to.

Of course, if they actually had their own players' interests at heart, they'd have at least waited until Eastbourne qualifying was finished in order to offer them to any Brit who qualified for Eastbourne instead, on the basis that anyone winning 3 ATP qualifying matches probably had a fair chance of winning a Wimbledon main draw match too.

The most wrong-headed thing about all this is that by giving Ward and Baker WCs into the two ATPs, they're effectively sending out a pretty clear message that they think they are the two Brits other than Andy most likely to be able to beat a top 100 player on grass (never mind if that's not the actual reason why they got them ...), and when they've got just two players they think are in that category, to then force one ofthem to choose (such that if they take up the ATP main draw WC they won't even get a chance to try to qualify for the most important tournament of all) seems barmy beyond belief.

-- Edited by steven on Thursday 17th of June 2010 03:35:02 PM

Madeline wrote:

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clayfan wrote:

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There is a danger giving the same players wild card after wild card, in that they will have their ranking lifted artificially and create a self perpetuating "elite!" over the players who do not get wildcards.

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How do you come to this conclusion? Wild cards get no points unless they win a match, so their ranking is unaffected. Unless of course you are supposing that they will all win a match, which is pretty unlikely. What it does give them is some useful cash and experience, but no help in ranking.

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In fact, as I understand it, if Jamie doesn't win a round, he will lose ranking points from getting his Wimbledon WC.  I would have thought even a zero MD WC score will be a mandatory counter and thus replace his current 18th score of 3 points.

If he does win a round and thus gains signficantly from it, then well done and good luck to the guy.  But I do certainly agree more Brits should have been given that chance.

-- Edited by indiana on Thursday 17th of June 2010 05:49:01 PM

yep effectively he will only count a best of 17 for the next 12 months, i call it the boggo effect :)

hey this year alex will get 18! - lets hope he can actually get 18 scores on the board, he doesnt always.