Last year’s Wimbledon fairytale story Marcus Willis moved closer to another round of heroics on Monday, advancing into the second round of qualifying on along with eight #NextGenATP players.
The Brit took time off from his tennis coaching job last year to play Wimbledon pre-qualifying and earned a wild card into the qualifying draw. He then qualified for the main draw and won his first-round match before falling to Roger Federer on Centre Court.
This year in Roehampton, Willis produced more memorable moments with a qualifying wild card by scoring a 7-5, 7-5 win over 31st seed Andrej Martin of Slovakia. Next up for him is a fellow British wild card in Liam Broady.
In an all-#NextGenATP battle, Elias Ymer of Sweden defeated Duckhee Lee of South Korea 6-3, 6-2. It was Ymer’s first match on grass since qualifying for the Wimbledon main draw two years ago.
“If I’m playing a top-ranked guy, I really don’t know what to expect. But the (#NextGenATP) guys, I’ve seen (Duckhee) since I was 12, so it’s kind of a family kind of feeling. You relax more,” said Ymer to Wimbledon.com. “It feels like it’s on my level if I’m playing one of the young guys.”
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#NextGenATP player Stefanos Tsitsipas scored the upset of the day by defeating second seed Santiago Giraldo of Colombia 2-6, 6-4, 6-3. The 18 year old from Greece will take on Yannick Hanfmann of Germany in the next round.
Fifth seed Andrey Rublev continued his grass-court prowess with a convincing 6-3, 6-3 victory over Joao Domingues of Portugal. The 18-year-old #NextGenATP Russian reached his first ATP World Tour quarter-final last week in Halle.
Other #NextGenATP players to move into the second round of qualifying are 12th seed Stefan Kozlov of the U.S., 19th seed Alexander Bublik of Kazakhstan, 21st seed Taylor Fritz of the U.S., 25th seed Quentin Halys of France and Alex de Minaur of Australia.
All second-round qualifying matches will be completed on Tuesday. View full Monday results here.