James Ward won a single point against the serve yesterday that was not a double fault, Josh Goodall had four set points but was unable to fashion a breakthrough and five other Britons failed to clear the first hurdle in the qualifying competition.
For more than just that his presence has helped to soften the blow of Rafael Nadal’s withdrawal, Andy Murray has become the British beacon in the inaugural AEGON Championships.
If the most significant piece of news on the official opening of the grass-court season was that Laura Robson, gifted a Wimbledon wild card at the age of 15, will become the youngest British player since Annabel Croft in 1982 to appear in the Championships, the second was that defeats for Ward and Goodall were not considered reason enough to deny them the invitation to play on the hallowed lawns from Monday week.
The clatter of home hopes on the first day at the Queen’s Club, West London, will have struck a discordant note with the LTA, the tournament’s proprietors. The governing body was steaming that not more than two of the five wild cards were handed to “its” players, clearly believing that it merited a more significant return for the £4 million investment it is said to have made into the event. On yesterday’s evidence, it was saved from further punishment.
A tournament such as this thrives on parading the best of men’s tennis and, with Goodall’s ranking at No 199 and Ward’s at No 220, we can offer only a poor second-best apart from Murray. Ward was nowhere near the levels expected of him - and that he expected of himself - against Marcos Baghdatis, the Cypriot who reached the Australian Open final in 2006 and has not replicated that magic since. Goodall was never at the races.
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There has been vigorous debate at the All England Club as to whether Alex Bogdanovic, the British No 2 and a failed Queen’s qualifier, should be given the chance to turn around his sequence of seven successive first-round defeats in the Championships. In the end, he received the benefit of an enormous amount of doubt.
But this is time, surely, for a review of the entire system: how it is operated, what the criteria should be and who bears responsibility should there be another deluge of British defeats. Bogdanovic, the world No 189, was not considered for a Davis Cup play-off in March to help to determine the squad to face Ukraine and yet three months later, he is worthy of a place in the biggest tennis championship in the world. It really is astonishing.
On court yesterday, the British game was suffering from another case of the blues - rather apt given that it is the AEGON brand colour, replacing 30 years of Stella Artois red. Baghdatis, granted the last of the wild cards, faced Ward, the 22-year-old Londoner whose rise of 275 places on the ATP World Tour in 12 months culminated in him becoming the first British player since Tim Henman 14 years ago to win a challenger tournament on clay, a month ago. Those successes are most welcome but it is no guarantee of a transference of such form on to grass and Ward succumbed rather meekly 6-2, 6-3.
Goodall had been warned that Gilles M?ller, his opponent from Luxembourg, possessed a killer forehand down the line and when the first five fizzed past him, Jeremy Bates, his coach, looked on knowingly. Goodall needs to play less stiffly and his eye for an opportunity has to be keener. There were three chances at 3-5 in the first set, but M?ller hit a couple of unreturnable serves and the gate had been closed.
If Ward and Goodall will walk relatively unnoticed through the gates of the All England Club later this month, imagine the fanfare for Robson, who is still a schoolgirl but bears the manner of a mature student. She has shown a rare ability to handle everything that has been thrown at her so far.
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Nadal is having tests in Barcelona on his knees and is expected to give details of his availability for Wimbledon tomorrow.