Former Wimbledon champion Becker declared bankrupt
The three-time champion owed a substantial sum to an investment company.
| Eastbourne 2017 |
|---|
| Dates: 26 June-1 July |
| Venue: Devonshire Park, Eastbourne |
| Coverage: Live across BBC TV, radio and online |
The three-time champion owed a substantial sum to an investment company.
Watch five of the best shots as Grigor Dimitrov beats Julien Benneteau 4-6 6-3 6-4 in the second round of the Aegon Championships.
Petra Kvitova continued her return from a career-threatening hand injury with a 6-2 6-2 win over Briton Naomi Broady in the second round of the Aegon Classic.
The two-time Wimbledon champion, 27, was stabbed by an intruder at her home in December.
Czech Kvitova returned at last month’s French Open before earning the first comeback win in Birmingham on Monday.
British number two Broady, who beat Alize Cornet in the first round, failed to create a break point.
Broady, 27, was overpowered by Kvitova’s trademark serve and booming groundstrokes as the 2011 and 2014 Wimbledon champion wrapped up both sets by winning four consecutive games.
“So far it is working very well. I still have a lot of things to improve but it is good news,” said Kvitova, who will compete at Wimbledon when the tournament starts on 3 July.
“I want to play as many matches as I can. It was a dream come to true to play again and it is great preparation for Wimbledon.”
Watch highlights as Jo-Wilfried Tsonga becomes the latest seed to fall at the Aegon Championships with a straight-set defeat by Luxembourg’s Gilles Muller.
Former world number one Victoria Azarenka saved three match points before winning on her comeback from a year out after the birth of her son.
The two-time Australian Open champion, who gave birth to Leo in December, won 6-3 4-6 7-6 (9-7) against Japan’s Risa Ozaki at the Mallorca Open.
It was the 27-year-old Belarusian’s first match since losing at the French Open in June 2016.
Azarenka was sixth in the world when she announced her pregnancy last July.
She was a game away from defeat when play was suspended on Tuesday because of fading light.
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But she showed her trademark resilience to twice break 74th-ranked Ozaki’s serve when they returned on Wednesday, then going on to fight back from 5-3 down in the tie-break.
Azarenka was given a wildcard to play in the Mallorca Open, which is scheduled to be her only competitive action before Wimbledon.
The former Wimbledon quarter-finalist has used her protected ranking to play at the All England Club in the tournament which starts on 3 July.
| Eastbourne 2017 |
|---|
| Dates: 26 June-1 July |
| Venue: Devonshire Park, Eastbourne |
| Coverage: Live across BBC TV, radio and online |
Novak Djokovic will play his first pre-Wimbledon event in seven years after accepting a wildcard at Eastbourne.
The three-time Wimbledon champion has not played since losing in the French Open quarter-finals earlier this month.
The 30-year-old Serb has dropped to fourth in the world after a turbulent year in which he has only won one title and split with his coaching team.
“I am looking forward to fine-tuning my grass court game ahead of Wimbledon,” said the 12-time Grand Slam winner.
“This will be my first trip to Eastbourne, I have heard great things about the tournament.”
Djokovic became the first man since Rod Laver in 1969 to hold all four Grand Slam titles at the same time last year, but now does not hold any after suffering a loss of form.
He suffered early-round exits at last year’s Wimbledon and January’s Australian Open, then lost to Austria’s world number eight Dominic Thiem at Roland Garros.
Defeat against Thiem meant he slipped out of the world’s top two for the first time since 2011.
Eastbourne is the final tour event before Wimbledon starts on Monday, 3 July.
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Britain’s Marcus Willis has been awarded a wildcard into qualifying for Wimbledon after his fairytale run at last year’s tournament.
Willis won six matches to qualify last year, before beating a top-100 player in the first round and losing to Roger Federer on Centre Court in the second.
He will definitely be at Wimbledon again this year as he has received a wildcard for the doubles.
Seven Britons have been given wildcards for the singles main draws.
They are Naomi Broady, Heather Watson, Laura Robson, Katie Boulter in the women’s draw, plus Brydan Klein, Cameron Norrie and James Ward in the men’s competition.
All are ranked inside the world’s top 250 with the exception of Ward, who has spent much of the last year on the sidelines with a knee injury.
Wimbledon runs from Monday, 3 July to Sunday, 16 July.
German Tommy Haas, a Wimbledon semi-finalist in 2009, has also been given a wildcard, along with Canadian Denis Shapovalov in the men’s draw.
Shapovalov, 18, was defaulted in a Davis Cup match against Kyle Edmund in February after hitting a ball in frustration that fractured umpire Arnaud Gabas’s eye socket.
He beat Edmund at the Aegon Championships in London on Monday at Queen’s Club.
BBC tennis correspondent Russell Fuller
“Willbomb’s on fire .. Federer is terrified” was one of the more unusual chants that could be heard on Centre Court last year as Willis played the seven-time champion in the second round.
Willis had been playing mostly in the French and German leagues and was ranked 772 in the world prior to the Championships. He has played sparingly in the past 12 months, and, now ranked 387, has won just under £3,000 on the Futures circuit so far this year.
Many other British players will have a chance to compete in qualifying – including the 18-year-olds Jay Clarke and Katie Swan and 19-year-old Gabriella Taylor.
Taylor spent four days in intensive care after losing her girls’ quarter-final match last year, and Scotland Yard later investigated claims that she had been poisoned.
| 2017 Aegon Championships |
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| Venue: Queen’s Club, London Dates: 19-25 June |
| Coverage: Comprehensive live coverage on BBC One, BBC Two, Red Button, Connected TV and online daily |
Losing in the first round at Queen’s Club doesn’t mean I can’t go on and do well at Wimbledon. It just means I’ve got a lot of work to do.
I knew before the tournament that I still have some way to go if I’m going to get up to the level where I challenge for the biggest titles, but I certainly expected more from myself.
I’m not the only player to suffer a surprise on the grass – Roger Federer lost in the first round in Stuttgart, and Stan Wawrinka and Milos Raonic also lost at Queen’s on Tuesday.
Grass is a very different surface and can take time to adjust to, but I had plenty of time on the courts in the week before and was practising well, so no excuses there.
Conditions at Queen’s might be playing slightly quicker than usual because of how warm it’s been, so the court’s a bit drier, which speeds it up. Again, I have enough experience to handle that.
The quality of the guys across the net has a lot to do with it.
I saw a bit of Thanasi Kokkinakis against Raonic, and he played great, some really good stuff when he was behind in the games. Feliciano Lopez is a very good grass-court player and played extremely well against Wawrinka.
And sometimes it’s just coincidence. In an individual sport these results can happen.
I found out that I was playing Jordan Thompson a few hours before the match, when I finished practising and saw on my phone that he had replaced Aljaz Bedene, who was injured.
At a Grand Slam, I will usually I talk about the next match with my team the night before, while at other events, when you play day after day, we tend to chat an hour and a half before the match.
That wasn’t the case on Tuesday. I hadn’t gone through any of my pre-match game plan with the team, but online you can get plenty of footage, so they found a little bit of him playing and I had a look on a tablet.
Three or four hours is still enough time to get ready for a different opponent; it can often be a lot shorter.
When it came down to it, he just played better than me.
He served well, I didn’t return the first serve well enough, and my decision-making and movement on the grass can get better.
First-round defeats haven’t happened loads during my career at Queen’s Club, but they have happened.
I lost to Nicolas Mahut in 2012 and used the extra time to play a couple of exhibition matches, and then reached my first final at Wimbledon.
Winning a tournament is great and you feel good afterwards, but you can also sometimes think that your game is in a good place and maybe become a little bit more relaxed in that week beforehand.
Now, there is clearly a lot of work required. I need to get myself out there on the practice court.
There will be a slight change of plans and each day becomes extremely important, because I just don’t have the matches behind me. I’ll need to put in a good 10 or 12 days of hard work.
Fewer matches means more practice, so it won’t change my home life too much in the build-up to Wimbledon.
My daughter Sophia sleeps pretty much from 6.30pm most days and I leave to practise pretty early, then I’m not back until quite late.
I’m very thankful she sleeps in the evenings – it’s a good thing – but it does mean I don’t get to see her quite as much.
Hopefully we’ll get the chance to catch a bit of Peppa Pig somewhere along the line.
Andy Murray was talking to BBC Sport’s Piers Newbery