Tim Henman defends woeful Wimbledon wildcards

James Olley
24 Jun 2009

Tim Henman has defended the All England Club's decision to hand wildcards to British tennis players after eight of them crashed out in the first round at Wimbledon.

Elena Baltacha became the only one handed a place at SW19 to win when she beat Alona Bondarenko in three sets late last night. Andy Murray, who qualified for the tournament on his world ranking, described the situation as “unacceptable” after he reached the second round with a 7-5, 6-7, 6-3, 6-4 win over American Robert Kendrick.

Alex Bogdanovic, Josh Goodall, Dan Evans, James Ward, Katie O'Brien, Georgie Stoop, Laura Robson and Mel South were all handed wildcards and all lost their first matches.

Bogdanovic has now been handed eight chances to play in the men's singles at Wimbledon and lost his opening clash on each occasion.

Gallery: the British Wimbledon flops

The British No2 has won £75,825 in prize money at the All England Club; currently earns £31,000 from the Lawn Tennis Association in funding; up until November last year was using Brad Gilbert as his coach at a cost of £375,000 to the sports governing body and yet has never progressed to the second round.

Former Wimbledon champion Boris Becker believes time has now run out for the 25-year-old who is ranked 191 in the world.

“Maybe the next time someone thinks about giving Alex a wildcard, they should make him qualify instead,” Becker said.

But Henman, a four-time Wimbledon semi-finalist who sits on the wildcard committee alongside leading figures including LTA's head of men's tennis Nigel Sears and player director Steve Martens, stressed the importance of helping domestic talent.

Henman said: “There was a strong case for Alex not to get a wildcard. Where I felt that he benefitted was that that at the end of the day, there are eight Wimbledon wildcards. There were three fairly straightforward British ones. James Ward and Goodall met the criteria and Dan Evans was a special case — he is one of the highest ranked players in the world for his age and he has had some great results.

“They have also helped some foreign players like a champion in Juan Carlos Ferrero. So when you get down to the other end of it, do you help another foreign player — Taylor Dent from America for example coming back from injury, or do you help Bogdanovic?

“I want to help British players at the end of the day. He met the criteria — he was inside the world's top 250 as you need to be, which was part of it so ultimately we had to make a decision and we went with him.”

Only one player in the history of Wimbledon has a worse record than Bogdanovic — Ireland's Joe Hackett suffered nine consecutive defeats in the 1950's — but the he insisted: “I think I am getting better and definitely every year I am getting stronger. This is giving me confidence just to keep working hard and keep believing.”