WANTED: Wimbledon Wildcards
What tennis pro wouldn't want a wildcard into the singles main draw at Wimbledon? The organizers of Wimbledon have made the choice not to award all of their wildcards in 2008 so that there were a couple extra spots in the men's main draw for players off the waitlist. In addition, unlike the pattern generally followed by the other Grand Slams, (i.e. French Open, U.S. Open and Australian Open) Wimbledon didn't offer the wildcards
exclusively to British players. Instead, main draw wildcards were given to a couple players who played very well at the recent French Open, i.e. Frenchman, Jeremy Chardy and Spaniard, Carla Suarez Navarro, who went through the French Open qualifying all the way to the quarterfinals. Wildcards were also given to Canadian, Frank Dancevic, and Poland's Urszula Radwanska, who won the 2007 Junior Wimbledon title and is the sister of top-twenty ranked Agnieska Radwanska. Former top-ranked doubles player and top 30 singles player, Australian Samantha Stosur, and Belgian, Xavier Malisse, who are coming back from injuries were also given a free pass into the main draw. Zie Zheng of China, a former Wimbledon doubles winner, who is also on the comeback trail after an ankle injury in 2007 received the final Ladies’ wildcard. Given the current state of British tennis, it is somewhat surprising that Wimbledon didn't offer the last two wildcards to British men. At the same time, Wimbledon, as one of the premier international sporting events, showed its global perspective by awarding the wildcards to (only) those players it felt deserved the spots.
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