British Tennis Forum - Celebrating 20 Years!

wimbledont wrote:

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Yeah, pleased with the eventual wildcards, and surprised; it was more of a wishlist than a prediction.

I see the anonymity of this tournament has also been discussed in the men's section...

When I was trying to find it on the LTA website, I tried searching LTA tournaments using the term "wimbledon".

This yields 239 results of tournaments between 1/1/25 and 31/12/25, under the branding of "Play your way to Wimbledon" - mainly county/regional champioships, at various age grades.

It's very unclear to me that there is any pathway for any of the players in the other 238 tournaments to get anywhere close to this event - Mika I think won an entry here by winning the National Girls title; which she didnt take up, for obvious reasons.

I would imagine that there might well be very good tennis players in the country, who are simply not in any financial position to spend a few months hanging around Mediterranean resorts long enough to get an ITF/WTA ranking, but who could turn up at a county champs, and win it... Not at all sure that this would give any of them an obvious route to "Play your way" even to this tournament. AFAICT, it's based on WTA rankings, and otherwise an invitational.

In football, if a team starts in the FA Cup in August in preliminary round 1 (of 4, I think), they have a 1/16 chance of making round 1, then a 1/4 chance of playing Man City etc in January in round 3. It may be nigh on impossible in the real world, but there is a clear and understood "way to Wembley".

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 Well, there was a w/c going to the British Tour Worthing winner. That was Katherine Barnes, though she would have got in anyway on ranking I believe. But if someone else had won, say Jacquelyn O, who lost in the final of Worthing, then theoretically you could win maybe 4 matches in Worthing, 3 in qwc tournament, 3 in qualies then main draw upto 7. So 17 matches to win Wimbledon.... obviously so unlikely as to be not going to happen. But there is that pathway.. You do need to be a decent player to get into Worthing, based on wtn but that would include lots of players.....college players and ex college players plus higher juniors (below the lta cohort). And of course could even have started in Worthing qualifiers!

Deucebag wrote:

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Well done to both Katies.
I think most of us on here would have wanted both to come through.
Does anybody know when the draw for quallys comes out?

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 The official website says the mens qualifying draw will be available on 22 June and the ladies on 23 June, o the day before play.