NEARLY MAN
This time last year, British tennis player Marcus Willis (with a then world ranking of 772) had a brief, brilliant moment of glory. He played Roger Federer on Centre Court in the second round at Wimbledon. (He lost, 6–0 6–3 6–4). Few watching had heard of him, fewer still remember his name now. But Willis has been a professional for 16 years, slogging his way around the sport’s ignored lower echelons, scratching out a living. What makes him do it? Why doesn’t he throw in his racket? What does his wife say? And can he ever repeat that fleeting flirtation with the big time?
On a cold Tuesday morning in Febru ary, I drove to a leisure centre outside Shrewsbury to watch Marcus Willis, Britain’s eighth best tennis player and the world number 397, play Ronan Joncour, a 20-year-old Frenchman ranked almost 350 places below him. The pair were competing in the opening game of a $15,000 ITF Futures event, and, by 10.30am, a crowd had gathered. This was unusual for a first-round tie at Shrewsbury. Few people had turned up to the equivalent contest last year. Even fewer had bothered the year before. “It’s always quite busy for the final,” Alvin Ward, the club’s general manager, told me. But a firstround match on a weekday?
Willis, 26, had arrived an hour earlier with his wife, Jenny, who was eight months pregnant. They sat at a table in the club bar, drinking cappuccinos. Willis wore a black cap and various shades of fluorescent, and every so often a passer-by would notice him and hesitate, wondering whether or not to intrude before a match or to wait until afterwards. The closer it got to game time, the more passers-by stalled before moving past him. Heads turned. Eyes lingered. At a nearby table, a man tugged at the elbow of his wife’s jumper and lifted his eyebrows in Willis’s direction. The move was meant to be inconspicuous, but was not. Willis stood up, said a brief goodbye to Jenny, and walked off to stretch.
Not that he minded the attention. Neither was it unusual. A year ago, maybe, when his stock was low. But then something curious happened. In June 2016, against stacked odds, Willis snuck into the qualifying rounds of Wimbledon, his home Grand Slam. Then he made it into the draw proper, won his first round, played Roger Federer in the second — on Centre Court! — and, to everyone’s great surprise (apart, maybe, from his own), didn’t do too badly, despite staggering differences in quality and experience. Willis lost the match but won at pretty much everything else. He received £50,000 in prize money — over £49,000 more than he’d earned so far that year. He trended on Twitter. He popped up in Hello!, twice, with Jenny, on both occasions for a fee. He appeared on the back pages of every major British newspaper and sometimes the front. Editorial writers billed him as an antidote to Brexit. Six days before the Federer game, just over half of Britain had voted to leave Europe. Such was the extent of positive public interest, you wondered whether Willis might inadvertently repair a despondent nation’s colossal political divide.
He’s been an object of affection ever since. People recognise him. Fans request his autograph. (He will sign anything.) Strangers actually approach him on the street. And then the cameras appear. “Even in America!” he told me, in disbelief. Even in America they ask for selfies.
And in Shrewsbury, too. As Willis and Joncour began a carefully choreographed, impeccably polite warm-up — forehands to backhands, lobs to overheads — spectators vied for position on a first-floor balcony, phones out, cameras ready. Most were locals; recreational club members avoiding the office. But others had made not inconsiderable journeys specifically to offer Willis encouragement. One middle-aged couple had arrived from a town in Berkshire, 150 miles away, and planned to remain in Shrewsbury for as long as Willis remained in the tournament. (Willis is Berkshire-born and the couple were supporting “a local boy,” they said.) I know semi-serious tennis fans who’d think twice about driving 150 miles to watch peak-career Federer. Even if the event at which he was playing was as informal, and entirely free, as Shrewsbury, and peak-career Federer as perfectly penetrable as Willis.
Which makes all the attention seem a bit odd. And then you see him on court. Willis is not among tennis’s exceptional athletes. He does not have Federer’s grace, Murray’s grit or Djokovic’s astonishing resilience. He is not explosive. Neither does he contain the power to subscribe to the monotony of baseline tennis. He does have what pundits might describe as “weapons”: an accurate 130mph serve, a hefty forehand. But they do not always fire. The crux of the Willis game is guile. He is impulsive, instinctive and surprisingly game-savvy. Basically, he mixes it up. Slices. Lobs. Drop shots. Good hands. Slow strokes that sap rhythm, others that startle with speed. Often they are combined within one rally and distributed with a mischievous smile. It is not razzmatazz (see the enigmatic Australian Nick Kyrgios), but it is entertaining. Variety is Willis’s single most important asset and his most beguiling. He is a superstar of the tennis stroke medley.
And the nub? He delivers it all with a languor more closely associated with amateur participation than elite competition, which gives him the air of a perennial underdog, even when he’s odds-on to win a match. Against Joncour, Willis did not have a game plan — he prefers “not to analyse too much” — and he regularly appeared more interested in events happening off-court than those occurring on it. He has by most measures an easy-going playing style, which can make him appear indifferent to results. (He is not.) But it is also what makes him so easy to root for, what made crowds swoon at Wimbledon, what brought so many people to Shrewsbury, in the cold, on a Tuesday. Here is a player with no fathomable playing habits who appears on court less like an untouchable sports brand than an approachable new friend. As the game began, crowd support evolved from polite applause to unbridled cheers, particularly after exciting or unpredictable rallies. Willis can incite in spectators an unreasonable desire to vocalise.
For Joncour, a baseline power hitter who relies on pattern and tends towards the erratic, the variety in pace, spin and direction of Willis’s groundstrokes (and, perhaps, the partisan support) was overwhelming. Willis won in straight sets, barely challenged. As he ambled off court he looked up at Jenny, briefly clenched his fist, and smiled broadly. Jenny beamed back. So, too, did the rest of the crowd.
I first noticed Willis last June, on television, as he dismantled the 26-year-old Lithuanian right-hander Ričardas Berankis in the Wimbledon first round. Willis’s win was peculiar. For starters, the game was a rankings mismatch. Willis came into the tournament toiling at number 772 in the world. Berankis, then the world number 54, was on the cusp of breaking into the game’s elite. A former junior world number one, he had over 50 wins on the men’s ATP Tour and, significantly, 10 at Grand Slams, a level at which Willis had never played. And Berankis actually looked like a tennis player: lithe, muscular, focused. Willis carried himself like a local club pro, which, to a degree, he was; coaching was helping him fund a career. He walked on court in awe and noticeably pudgy. Willis has previously described himself as “a bit of a fatboy”. (Before the Berankis tie, a YouTube clip of Willis eating a chocolate bar between games at a 2014 tournament began to notch views. One user suggested he become the face of Snickers.) When spectators at Wimbledon got their first look, they saw a handsome, baby-faced Brit with love handles.
It was no small wonder that Willis was even there: a last-minute withdrawal had
‘I GENUINELY THOUGHT I COULD BEAT FEDERER. I DESERVED A SET’
given him entry into the event’s qualifying rounds. (He was informed the night before.) So while players admitted to the competition’s first round on rankings merit rested, Willis played six gruelling knock-out games, three against Brits, then three more against international players who were all then, or have since become, top-100 pros. Every morning before a game he would check out of his hotel for fear of being left with a bill for an overnight he wouldn’t need. Willis had planned to return to Warwick, where he and Jenny live, as soon as he lost. Every time he won, he got a lift to his hotel and checked back in.
Willis’s first-round game against Berankis, then, was his seventh of the tournament, the Federer match his eighth. To onlookers, both games seemed beyond him. But Willis had been playing well on a circuit in France, and, when he beat Berankis — in straight sets — he believed that, aged 25, he’d finally discovered his level. The Federer loss wasn’t unexpected, but still it was disappointing. “Genuinely I thought I could win,” Willis told me in Shrewsbury. “Thought I deserved a set.”
I did, too. In moments, Willis shone. One particular shot, a delicate lob that seemed out until the moment it dropped in, played on BBC highlight reels throughout the tournament. (Federer smiled at that one, although his look also seemed to warn Willis against trying anything like it again.) In the third set, he appeared more like a top-100 contestant than a first-time qualifier, but by that point the game was over. At match point, Willis received a standing ovation and became teary. “You look over at your family and friends,” he said, “and realise it’s all come to an end.”
I’d come to Shrewsbury to see what had happened next. Throughout Wimbledon, Willis was consistent in interviews when asked about his plans for the future. The intention now, he said, was to use Wimbledon as a springboard. It was time to finally realise his potential. To break into the game’s top 100. To play the Slams. To regularly reach the level at which he knows he is capable of competing. It appeared, in moments, like he was directing answers to himself: self-encouragement, caught on camera. “There’s life after Wimbledon,” he told reporters on exit. “I want more.” More has since been difficult to attain. Willis won a $10,000 Futures tournament in Kuwait in November, but injury prevented competitions elsewhere. In January, he entered a Futures event in Glasgow and crashed out of the second round against a player ranked 691 in the world. The following week he played in Tipton, in the West Midlands, where he made the semi-finals. Shrewsbury was his third competition of the year and, in a way, a must-win lest ranking suffer or, perhaps worse, confidence waver.
The Futures circuit is the lowest of three rungs of professional tennis and in many ways its most challenging. It is where young players get their start — it is a launchpad to the Challenger Tour and then the ATP Tour proper — and not-quite-good-enough older players linger. In terms of glamour, the differences between Futures tournaments and the ATP Tour are vast. An example: in Shrewsbury, players loitered in the centre’s communal areas before and after games as there was nowhere else for them to go. (Imagine being able to sidle up to Andy Murray at a Wimbledon café while he warms up for a crunch semi-final?) Another example: Futures events take place in towns like Shrewsbury.
Players on the Futures circuit share one