Inglot and Skugor face football rivalry
For all Wimbledon’s best efforts in keeping their beloved tournament untouched by events in Russia, it seems the World Cup’s tentacles have finally stretched inside the All England Club. More accurately, the uncontainable football fever has been smuggled into SW19 by a doubles pairing, Dominic Inglot and Franko Skugor.
Inglot, you see, is a diehard England supporter who was told by Andy Murray to “calm down” after he fanatically backed Gareth Southgate’s side earlier in the tournament. And Skugor, his partner on court, is a football-loving Croatian.
The coincidence of nationalities makes for one of the great quirks of a tournament that has been, by almost all measures, overshadowed by the antics of Harry Kane, Jordan Pickford and the rest of the “It’s Coming Home” troop in Russia.
“It has been constant banter [with Skugor],” Inglot said. “We have been talking about how we are going to have to keep it civil until Wednesday. He was saying, ‘Yeah, we’ll have a tough match,’ and I told him, ‘yeah, I agree – England will have a tough match in the final’. It will be great fun if we get to watch it together.”
Inglot (below left), whose father was a professional footballer in Poland, has not held back in his support of the Three Lions. Ahead of the group game against Belgium, he told his friends that he was planning on wearing face paint to watch the match. As he discovered later that evening, they had thought he was joking. “They were in evening wear,” he laughed. “It looked a bit dodgy, but I showed passion.”
Inglot, 32, was similarly enthusiastic about the Panama match last month, when he was playing at Eastbourne. “Andy told me, ‘You need to relax, mate, and calm down, it’s Panama’. I said ‘No! Passion!’ And I asked him: ‘Where’s the Scottish team?’”
The plan is for Inglot and Skugor (below right) to watch Wednesday’s match together, although a strong contingent of Croatians at this year’s tournament may lead to the Londoner being outnumbered on the night. “Maybe I should bring my coach, bring the face paint and see what happens,” Inglot laughed. “I love football and I love the fact that England are doing so well.”
The more serious side to the Inglot-skugor relationship is that they face Argentina’s Maximo Gonzalez and Chile’s Nicolas Jarry, who beat third seeds Henri Kontinen and John Peers in the first round, on Court 12 today. “Hopefully some Brits will be supporting Croatia,” Inglot said. “Just for now.”
On a busy day for British doubles, Jay Clarke and Harriet Dart meet 13th seeds Max Mirnyi and Kveta Peschke in the mixed competition.
Jamie Murray will also be in action twice. The two-time men’s doubles grand slam champion first meets another British duo, Ken and Neal Skupski, alongside his Brazilian partner Bruno Soares. He then plays with Victoria Azarenka against Rob ert Farah and Anna-lena Groenefeld in the mixed. Murray won that title with Martina Hingis last year.