My difficulty with GB wildcards isn't the WCs per se (yes, I recognise that they confer an unfair advantage to people from GS nations ... but there are ways of compensating for that if the political will exists ... and the "home" support and excitement around potential breakthroughs does help the feel of the tournament). It's this question of discussing MD WCs for people who, overall, wouldn't by right even make the qualifying draw. Ms Robson is a special case, and I can see an exception for Katie Swan ... but can't really see much beyond that. Ms Christie is impressive and should certainly be in qualifying ... and who knows - if she has some really good runs, she might be in a position for a MD by Wimbledon time. But overall it feels as though QWCs should be the focus for most.

The difficulty is quite different for some of the other Slam nations: Australia is not that different from us on the women's side, but France could just about fill its quota of MD WCs with people eligible for qualifying. And for the US, if they took the next seven below the MD cut-off, they'd be stopping with Vania King (167) ... ie allowing in people who would have quite a good shot at qualifying anyway. That feels as if it makes more sense.