The remarkable and romantic story of Britain's Marcus Willis
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Updated 28/06/2016 at 09:44 GMT
It’s not often that any of the lowly British tennis players to enter and quickly depart Wimbledon every year leave behind even the slightest reminder of their existence during the fortnight. But 775-ranked qualifier Marcus Willis isn’t any British tennis player, writes Tumaini Carayol.
Britain's Marcus Willis celebrates after winning his match against Lithuania's Ricardas Berankis at Wimbledon
Image credit: Reuters
The crazy series of events that impossibly culminated in a 6-3 6-3 6-4 victory over 54-ranked Ricardas Berankis on Monday and a second round Wimbledon berth against Roger Federer against any semblance of logic will be told and retold again. They will be indelibly inked into the year’s Wimbledon annuals, they will be told in the accompanying video and they will be remembered, as they should be.
It is less a tennis story than a predictable rom-com shot to the background of tennis. Currently ranked 775th, the Englishman was busy plotting his route out of professional tennis in February of this year with a coaching job lined up in Philadelphia until he met his girlfriend, Jennifer Bate.
Both Willis and Bate explained to Ben Rothenberg of the New York Times that she convinced him to remain in Britain for her on the very night they met. Once they actually began dating, she urged him to re-commit himself to the career he was leaving behind.
“I met the girl. She told me not to, so I didn't. Do what I'm told,” he chuckled afterwards.
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Britain's Marcus Willis celebrates after winning his match against Lithuania's Ricardas Berankis at Wimbledon with fans
Image credit: Reuters
The series of fate-induced incidents only continued as Willis arrived at the Wimbledon pre-qualifying event for British players as the final entrant and lowest-ranked player with unranked prospects of success. He promptly captured three victories to secure his qualifying wildcard, before replicating this success in the humble, yet drastically greater, stage of Wimbledon’s qualifying rounds.
The intriguing aspect of Willis’ story is also augmented by the tennis that has driven it. Nicknamed the “Cartman” - a moniker positively reclaimed after Willis was scathingly likened to chunky South Park character Eric Cartman in reference to his weight - the Englishman isn’t simply a standard lower player completing at the peak of his powers; his talents and his style of play are very original.
After honing his racquet skills on badminton courts and a niche adaptation of tennis called touch tennis, Willis complements his fizzling lefty serve with a wristy variety of spins, slices off both sides and rushes into the net. Across his seven victories since the start of the Wimbledon pre-qualifying rounds, his very specific brand of tennis has presented a nightmare for the players accustomed to the generic opposition littered across all levels of the tour.
“He’s an awkward player,” said Andy Murray when asked to recall his countryman’s style. “Got quite a different sort of game style. Serve and volleys a little bit. He's got really good touch, good volleys. Puts a lot of slice on his slice backhand. Quite a spinny forehand. Quite an unusual player.”
But despite these extraordinary circumstances, it’s the ordinariness of the author of this story that is most significant. Willis didn’t react to the greatest professional week of his life with dramatic monologues and emotional thank yous. Instead, his first comments after his victory over Berankis were a series of mumbled three-word responses.
He was “enjoying his tennis”, he was “chuffed”, and he resembled essentially any 25-year-old guy walking the streets of London at any given time. The BBC reporter, charged with attempting to turn a great moment into something unforgettable, quickly gave up. There was nothing out of the ordinary here.
During his press conference, however, Willis elaborated on exactly how he ended up disillusioned enough to plan his departure.
“Six months to a year ago, (I was) not very confident, to be honest,” he said. “Kept getting injured. Tore my hamstring twice. Hurt my knee earlier this year. Had a bit of a rough phase. I was down, struggling to get out of bed in the morning.”
Willis is particularly ordinary because he represents what is essentially the normal consequence of pursuing a tennis career. He is the 99% in a sport where the 1% includes those who are considered incredibly unlucky. For all the players who make it into the top echelons of the tour, and even those who find themselves stuck in the quicksand of the ATP Challenger and Futures tournaments while barely surviving, thousands of players never even make the cut.
The sport spends a lot of time shining a light on the players whose financial and physical investments in the sport pay dividends, but there are thousands upon thousands of players whose journeys end in what they consider abject failure. Their struggles force them to lose interest and passion with the sport and move to different spheres.
The ability to hit the ball well is elementary in tennis. There are so many capable tennis players and this is far from a rare talent, but the jigsaw puzzle of mental and personal quality plus circumstance that translate into sustainable careers is so complex. There are countless factors that must meet in combination for a successful tennis player to be born. Despite being tipped as a talented young player, it’s clear that most of these qualities eluded Ward for the longest time.
I was a bit of a loser, he said of his years in the wilderness. I was overweight. I was going off for pints. I was just a loser. I don't know. I just looked myself in the mirror, I said, ‘you're better than this’.
“My coach worked very, very hard with me. A lot of main people, my family, my close friends got behind me. It's key. You can't do this alone. It's a very lonely sport. You need people around you.”
The reward for Willis’ improved drive is a meeting with a man he has watched on television his entire life, and one who confessed that even he has been following the Brit’s story up close. “I think it's one of the best stories in a long time in our sport, other than [Novak] Djokovic winning slams. This is the kind of story we need in our sport,” said Federer.
The moral of this story is that commitment, drive and handling do matter so much in the sport of tennis. Despite how random this run of results seems, it’s clear that Willis believes it is a consequence of his transformed mentality and work ethic. It may be difficult and unlikely that he will be able to replicate even a fraction of his form exhibited during his career week at Wimbledon, but he has carved out a week that he will never forget. And nor will plenty of others.
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