{"id":50416,"date":"2022-06-24T12:57:01","date_gmt":"2022-06-24T16:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=50416"},"modified":"2022-06-24T12:57:01","modified_gmt":"2022-06-24T16:57:01","slug":"brits-bloom-on-grass-before-wimbledon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2022\/06\/24\/brits-bloom-on-grass-before-wimbledon\/","title":{"rendered":"Brits Bloom On Grass Before Wimbledon"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a truly remarkable month in the run-up to Wimbledon<\/a>, British tennis fans may just be in the unprecedented position of being happy that none of the British players at Eastbourne reached the Final, so that they can at last get some proper rest and rehabilitation before Wimbledon starts next week. The irony is, however, that the spectacular June 2022 that British tennis players have enjoyed may not earn them the reward that they deserve. That is because Wimbledon\u2019s decision to ban Russian and Belarusian players, and the subsequent decision of the ATP and WTA to strip ranking points from Wimbledon, means that even if the Brits do well at Wimbledon, they will not earn the ranking points that they would in any other year.<\/p>\n

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Flaming June? Volcanic June!<\/h3>\n

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“Flaming June” is the title of pre-Raphaelite painter Sir Frederic Leighton\u2019s famous painting of a young woman in an orange dress asleep in an armchair. Well, if Sir Frederic were alive today and attempting to capture the spirit of June 2022, he could do worse than to paint a young British tennis player (male or female) with their arms aloft in triumph, and call it “Volcanic June”, in testament to an extraordinary month of results by a wide variety of British players \u2013 especially the unheralded ones.<\/p>\n

It all began in Nottingham, where Dan Evans won the men\u2019s ATP Challenger event for the second time in three years, and Harriet Dart reached the quarter-final of the WTA 250, before losing to eventual finalist Alison Riske of the USA. Then it continued at both the ATP500 event at Queen\u2019s, traditionally the biggest men\u2019s warm-up event before Wimbledon, and at the Birmingham WTA 250. Ryan Peniston, the breakthrough British player of 2022, had already done well in Nottingham, but he raised his game even further at Queen\u2019s to defeat Casper Ruud, fresh from reaching the French Open Final, en route to the quarter-finals, while Jack Draper also excelled<\/a> in beating Taylor Fritz, the Indian Wells Champion, in the first round. Meanwhile, in Birmingham Katie Boulter reached the quarter-final, losing to Simona Halep.<\/p>\n

Finally, in Eastbourne this week, which has traditionally always been the last and biggest warm-up event for women before Wimbledon but which now also has an ATP250 event attached, the rising tide of British tennis almost became a tidal wave, as numerous British women and men produced the biggest wins of their career: Jodie Burrage beat top seed and World No.5 Paula Badosa; Katie Boulter beat two-time Major finalist Karolina Pliskova; Harriet Dart reached her first WTA quarter-final before losing to two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova; and Jack Draper progressed to the men\u2019s semifinal, in the process beating Britain\u2019s hero of Queen\u2019s, Ryan Peniston<\/a>, in the quarterfinal.<\/p>\n

For those British fans who remember the pre-Tim Henman era, when for nearly 20 years between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s Britain produced few if any players of note, it was enough to have them choking on their Pimm\u2019s. What on earth could have produced such a remarkable upsurge in form, right across the British men\u2019s and women\u2019s games?<\/p>\n

Embed from Getty Images<\/a>