Qualifiers are the real deal.
They win more than you think they do.
G’day from Wimbledon!
There are 16 qualifiers in the main draw of The Championships. They earned that right winning three rounds in the qualifying tournament at Roehampton this week.
Do they really have a chance to win a round or two? Oh, yes they do!
For the past 11 years (since 2006), qualifiers in the men’s draw have won a very impressive 40% of their first round matches at the Championships. That’s not far off the 50-50 battle that the rest of the players automatically have.
In 2012, they actually won 10 of 16 first round matches = 63%. A massive advantage for qualifiers is that they are already “match tough” for the opening round. They have just played three high pressure matches, and won them all. They also have a really good feel for the grass – something that a lot of main draw players may not yet have had time to acquire.
In 2013, qualifiers won nine matches, and in 2007, they broke even, winning eight of 16 matches. In no year since 2006 has at least one qualifier failed to win an opening round match. That also goes for the second round as well – at least one qualifier has made it through to the third round every year since 2006. The furtherest a qualifier reached in that period was the quarter finals.
The furthest a qualifier has ever reached at Wimbledon is the semi-finals. In 2000, Vladimir Voltchkov reached the semi-finals, losing 7-6, 6-2, 6-4 to Pete Sampras. Pistol Pete won a ridiculous 41 of 44 1st serve points in that match, crushing 13 aces, including four on his second serve.
In 1977, John McEnroe also made the semi-finals as a qualifier, losing to Jimmy Connors 6-3, 6-3, 4-6, 6-4.
Lucky Losers
The furthest round a lucky loser has reached at Wimbledon is the 4th round, which happened four times. Most recently it was Dick Norman, who lost to Boris Becker 7-6, 6-3, 6-4. Boris lost just four points on his first serve (won 55/59) for the match, hitting 17 aces along the way.
Interestingly, there were five lucky losers in 2011, with three winning their opening round matches. Since 2006, the most lucky losers to make the main draw was seven, in 2010.
Here are all the qualifier and lucky loser matches in round 1 in the men’s draw at Wimbledon this year
Q Illya Marchenko v Jiri Vesely
Q Simone Bolelli v Yen-Hsun Lu
Q Ruben Bemelmens v WC Tommy Haas
Q Andrew Whittington v Thiago Monteiro
Q Lukas Rosol v Henri Laaksonen
Q Sergiy Stakhovsky v Julien Benneteau
Q Peter Gojowczyk v Marius Copil
Q Andrey Rublev v Q Stefano Travaglia (two qualifiers play each other)
Q Christian Garin v #17 Jack Sock
Q Sebastian Ofner v Thomaz Bellucci
Q Taylor Fritz v John Isner
Q Stefano Tsitsipas v Dusan Lajovic
Q Nicolas Jarry Gilles Simon
Q Daniel Brands v Gael Monfils
Q Alexander Ward v Kyle Edmund
Lucky Loser
LL Alexander Bublik v #1 Andy Murray
Here’s my prediction: I think there will be NINE qualifiers/lucky losers advance to Rd. 2 this year. Let’s see how that goes! I will come back here to the blog and update it after Rd 1.
Special thanks to Georgie Sanders from IBM here at Wimbledon for doing the wonderful research for this analysis 🙂
Cheers from SW19,
Craig