Marcus Willis takes seven games off Roger Federer: 'I’ve earned a beer, I think'
As Marcus Willis, £30-an-hour part-time tennis coach from Wokingham, walked on to Centre Court shortly before 5pm on Wednesday to play arguably the greatest tennis player of all time, he raised one arm aloft, beamed from ear to ear, and gave a little shake of the head. Yes, this was really happening.
Roger Federer is quite a popular chap at the All England club, but for once the deafening cheers that roared around the court for an hour and 25 minutes during the pair’s second-round encounter were not, for the most part, for him. No one expected the man known as the Maestro to break much of a sweat against the world number 772, who a few years ago was so overweight he earned the nickname Cartman, after the “big-boned” character from South Park. But even by the standards of Wimbledon’s plucky Brit battlers, Willis’s was quite a story.
Just four months ago, the party-loving 25-year-old was on the verge of giving up playing altogether and moving to America to become a coach, until he met a woman on a night out, fell in love and was persuaded to stay. His place on Centre Court was earned the hard way, after winning seven successive matches in the tournament’s pre-qualifying and qualifying rounds, and beating Ricardas Berankis, ranked 54, in the first round proper. As his hero Goran Ivanisevic put it, Marcus Willis has already won Wimbledon.
And so, after the Swiss 17-time Grand Slam winner took the first set 6-0, Willis was cheered to the court’s retractable roof when he won his first game in the second. The crowd was conducted by the “Berkshire Bulldogs”, a small but rowdy group of the player’s mates, who roared adapted football chants and took off their shoes in homage to a prank Willis liked to play during training, where he would hide one of his opponent’s sneakers. At one point, he blew them a kiss.
In the player’s box above the scoreboard, his girlfriend Jennifer Bate – given an unexpected day off from her job as a Warwick dentist – and wider family were scarcely less excitable, leaping to their feet to roar with almost every point taken off the seven-time Wimbledon winner.
He lost, of course. But Willis certainly didn’t embarrass himself, being broken only once by the Swiss in the second and third sets to lose 6-0, 6-3, 6-4. As he walked to the centre of the court to acknowledge the crowd after losing, the joking was gone, and he appeared to be on the verge of tears. In the seats above the scoreboard, his parents Cathy and James, with whom he still lives, shared a hug.
“I was enjoying it out there,” a clearly exhausted Willis said after the match. “If I’m playing quite well and competing with Roger Federer for a couple of sets, I’m doing the right thing.”
Federer, for his part, said he had approached the match as if his opponent was a top 50 player, “because that’s the level he was playing at”.
But to those speculating over whether Willis might bow out of the game after an experience that will surely never be bettered, he was quite clear. “It sounds funny, but I’m disappointed to lose. I went out there trying to win.
“I’ve had a fantastic few weeks, and this has been great, but there’s life after Wimbledon, and I want more. More experiences like this. I have to knuckle down and work harder.”
And would he be celebrating this evening? “ I’m absolutely exhausted. I might wait and calm down. But I’ve earned myself a beer, I think.”
Inevitably, he was asked if he now planned to marry the woman who was responsible for his being here in the first place: “I haven’t thought, to be honest. This whole few weeks have been a bit of a blur. But I do like her quite a bit.”
And how would he sum up his day? “Amazing. It’s not my standard Wednesday.”
