Turn up at Wimbledon, lose first match... win £45k!
PLAYERS who are dumped out of Wimbledon in the first round this year will walk away with a record £45,000 in prize money to soften the blow.
The All England Club yesterday announced a surge in the value of cash prizes at this year’s tournament – particularly for the worst-performing players.
In a sign of the event’s popularity, the total prize pot for this year has risen by 11.8 per cent to a total of £38million. The winner of the men’s and ladies’ tournament will take home £2.35million, an increase of £100,000 from last year.
The prize money for those beaten in the first round has almost quadrupled from the £11,500 paid out in 2011. Those beaten in the second round will receive £72,000, an increase of 14.3 per cent on last year.
The move marks an attempt to spread the benefits of taking part at SW19 to lowerranked players. Prizes for the men’s and ladies’ doubles will rise by 14.2 per cent, with mixed doubles rewards up by 6.2 per cent.
The increases make Wimbledon the second highest-paying Grand Slam event in the tennis calendar, behind the US Open in Flushing Meadows.
New rules will also mark the end of epic encounters, with matches tied at 12-12 in the final set forced into a tiebreak. This will put an end to clashes such as the 11-hour and five-minute duel between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut in 2010, the longest match in tennis history.
And following criticism last year, the tournament has taken further steps to reduce plastic waste. The 4,500 plastic bags used to wrap players’ restrung rackets are to be scrapped, while visitors will be told by wardens to put their waste in recycling bins.
ANDY MURRAY hardly needs the £45,000 guaranteed to first-round singles losers by Wimbledon this year, and it remains highly unlikely that he will be in a position to earn that minimum amount. Yet should he make a miraculous recovery from hip surgery to play in The Championships, he will be given until the last minute to declare his fitness. Chief executive Richard Lewis suggested yesterday that a wildcard could, unusually, be held for him until just before the draw takes place on the Friday prior to the Monday start on July 1. ‘If Andy came forward with a strong case, we would work with him. It’s entirely up to Andy, it’s in his gift as to what he decides to do,’ said Lewis. As a homegrown two-times champion, he has earned that right, but realistically his only hope is surely to play in the men’s doubles or the mixed doubles. While Murray’s mother Judy last week described him as ‘cautiously optimistic’ about playing sometime this summer, on Sunday the man himself admitted he had still not done any movement, but had been hitting a ball in a stationary position. Encouragingly, he is now generally pain-free. Certainly he will not be challenging for the £2.35million on offer for the singles champions as part of an 11.8 per cent prize-money increase to a total of £38m. That is between four and five times the amount that was on offer at the Masters golf last month. Once again the losers are the biggest winners, with those 128 singles players going out in the first round receiving 15.4 per cent more than last year. The biggest development for 2019 is the impressive roof on Court No 1, but two significant shifts have been flagged up. Lewis said it was ‘highly likely’ Wimbledon will follow other events in having a 25-second shot clock for between points in 2020, while it was confirmed the postal ballot for tickets will be moving online. Meanwhile in Morocco, Jo Konta got her clay court campaign off to a winning start, saving three match points to defeat China’s Wang Yafan 4-6, 7-6, 6-4. Kyle Edmund lost his third match in a row, going down 6-4, 6-3 to the USA’s Denis Kudla in Munich.