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Wimbledon 2024: A joyful reversal of Brexit
Summary
Very few British players are excelling at Wimbledon, while the Italians and French shine. It is, to some extent, a self-inflicted woundWimbledon 2024 has resembled a kind of joyful reversal of Brexit. Who would have predicted that neither of the two Italians who made it to the semifinals would be named Sinner? When World No.1 Jannik Sinner suffered a spell of dizziness in his quarterfinal and ended up heroically losing a five-setter to Daniil Medvedev, Lorenzo Musetti, his stylish compatriot, stepped up his game and defeated American Taylor Fritz to reach the semis.
In the match of the tournament, Musetti dismantled Fritz, who had until then the best service record in the men’s competition, having been broken just twice, with a mixture of delicate drop shots, off-pace backhands and brutal forehands to match Fritz’s power. In the penultimate point of a glorious fifth set of old-world tennis by Musetti, he hit an unexpected drop shot that literally floored Fritz as he raced in to try and retrieve it.
Also read: Why Carlos Alcaraz is the top contender at Wimbledon 2024
In equally good form was Jasmine Paolini, the French Open finalist, who is all of 5ft, 4 inches but beat three hard-hitting North Americans and Croatian Donna Vekic to reach the finals with a similar mix of guile, agility and raw power.
Perhaps the real surprise was three Frenchmen in the last 16. The crafty Ugo Humbert, the 16th seed, took the ball so early that for four utterly glorious sets on Sunday he often left defending champion Carlos Alcaraz looking flat footed before losing. The left-handed Humbert appeared to be returning the Spaniard’s serves as soon as he had struck them. The match was closer than the score suggested and could have turned on a few points into an upset.
The story of the first week of this tournament was Giovanni Perricard, the 6ft, 8 inch Frenchman. He lost in the qualifying and was likely contemplating booking a flight home only to receive a call to say he had found a place in the draw as a so-called lucky loser. It often seemed like the spectators got lucky instead. Perricard has a thundering serve seemingly launched from a crane above the court, a huge forehand and a deft single-handed backhand. On Court 1 on Monday was Perricard’s compatriot and friend Arthur Fils who lost to Alex de Minaur, the ninth seed.
Seeking an explanation for this invasion of Italians and Frenchmen, I turned to veteran tennis journalist Richard Evans, who will be inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame this month along with Vijay Amritraj and Leander Paes. He said the French had turned over their top national coaching job recently to Ivan Ljubicic, the Croatian who became the best coach Roger Federer had.
Then there is the 21st century Italian Renaissance. Five of their players are in the top 50. Ubaldo Scanagatta, who, like Evans, has been coming to Wimbledon for more than half a century and edits the website Ubitennis.net, explains that a canvas of many regional tournaments in Italy means that up and coming players do not have to travel far to play junior tournaments or, when older, to the ATP Challenger events. Italy has as many as 20 ATP Challenger events, the tournaments for lower ranked players to accumulate points that enable them to eventually qualify for the main draws of international tournaments. “All five in the top 50 are either 22 or 23. They are good friends," he says. “If one beats a top 20 player, the others think, ‘I can do it’." This camaraderie was apparent during the Davis Cup semis and finals late last year in Malaga which Italy won after half a century, beating Serbia and then Australia.
This game of geographic predetermination goes only so far, however. The alchemy of how champions are born and made is one of life’s imponderables. As Evans points out, Steffi Graf and Boris Becker were born 50km from each other and “the German Federation had nothing to do with their success." It is hard not to wonder whether Sinner, who grew up in the Italian Dolomites closer to Austria than to Rome and, like Federer, spoke German as his first language, is a little more Germanic in his razor-sharp focus than Italian. After a disappointing result a couple of years ago at the Australian Open, for instance, he sacked his long-time coach.
The puzzle is why the UK produces so few tennis prodigies, despites its federation receiving in excess of £30 million (around ₹320 crore) every year from the profits of Wimbledon. This year, only one player made it to the third round. “British tennis is basically a one-woman show—Judy Murray," quips Evans. Not only did Andy Murray become a two-time Wimbledon champion but his brother Jamie Murray is a former world No.1 in doubles. Andy Murray retired at this Wimbledon. A good rank of doubles specialists notwithstanding, it is not clear that players such as Jack Draper have what it takes to combat the talent and skill of the Italians and French. But, Cameron Norrie, who had fallen to 42 in the world before this Wimbledon, grew up in New Zealand and, like Draper, at least has the serve and volley game to do well at a Wimbledon if it had a faster court surface.
As with Brexit, to some extent the paucity of British players doing well at Wimbledon is a self-inflicted wound. A couple of decades ago, fearing that serve and volley tennis was becoming monotonous, the All England Club used two varieties of Welsh grass to dramatically slow the courts down and provide a higher bounce. This is why so many Italians, Spaniards and French take to Wimbledon’s grass as if they had grown up on it. In a sense, they have. This year in particular the outside courts played as though they were slow clay courts in France or Italy.
The downside is that the All England Club thus stacked the odds against their own players, many of whom are natural volleyers. The sheer power of today’s rackets ensure that no one could continue to play serve and volley tennis continually unless willing to risk a broken wrist from countering the ballistic blast that is the average groundstroke. But faster courts would at least have meant that forays to the net would not have been as rare as a sunny day at this year’s Wimbledon.
The few matches that involved regular forays to the net were, not coincidentally, among the most enjoyable. The American Ben Shelton, with his huge serve, followed it to the net on many occasions. In their four-set classic, Humbert and Alcaraz structured points around seizing the advantage of being at the net time and again in their match.
This year’s Wimbledon also saw the Cinderella-like advance of the Italian Jasmine Paolini. Paolini, 28, had an undistinguished record until this year’s French Open where she reached the final. Like many of her compatriots, Paolini has a sunny personality that bubbles over in post-match interviews. This prompted a BBC interviewer to declare that she was the crowd favourite. Like the magical Musetti at Wimbledon this year, she is winning hearts. Reversing Brexit, on and off court, can yield rich dividends.
Rahul Jacob has covered Wimbledon for two decades for the Financial Times London and Mint.
