Four Britons One Win From US Open Main Draw After Qualifying Wins in New York
Four British players stand one win from the US Open main draw after coming through their qualifying matches in New York.
Jacob Fearnley, Toby Samuel, Harry Wendelken and Harriet Dart all won their second-round qualifying matches, leaving each a single victory away from a place in the main draw of the year's final Grand Slam — the four tournaments that sit at the top of the sport, where the biggest prizes and ranking points are on offer. Qualifying is the last-chance bracket for players ranked just outside the direct-entry field; win three rounds and you're in.
Fearnley, 25 and ranked world number 100, beat France's Luka Pavlovic 6-4 6-7 (4-7) 6-4. He served for the match in the second set, lost the tiebreak — a tiebreak being the first-to-sevenPoints mini-game used to settle a set locked at 6-6 — and then had to regroup for a deciding third. He did, breaking Pavlovic once more to close it out. Next up for Fearnley: Austria's Jurij Rodionov.
Toby Samuel, 23, came from a set down to beat fellow Briton Billy Harris 4-6 6-4 6-1. Samuel made his Grand Slam debut at this year's French Open and is now pushing for a second major appearance. His reward is a final qualifying round against Chile's Cristian Garin, a former top-20 player with main-draw pedigree that Samuel will have to overcome.
Harry Wendelken's route was the most dramatic. The 24-year-old, ranked 196th, saved a match point — a single point that, had his opponent won it, would have ended the contest — on the way to beating Switzerland's Remy Bertola 5-7 7-6 (7-4) 6-4. Wendelken has never contested the main draw at an overseas Grand Slam. He faces Lithuania's Vilius Gaubas for a place in the tournament proper.
On the women's side, Harriet Dart beat America's Jordyn Hazelitt 6-0 6-7 (1-7) 6-1 in her qualifying opener, according to the WTA's official scores. Dart has twice reached the second round of the US Open main draw, though she has recently slipped out of the world's top 100. After racing through the first set without dropping a game, she lost her way in the second-set tiebreak before recovering to dominate the decider.
What makes this qualifying batch stand out is its range. Fearnley is a top-100 player using qualifying as a stepping stone. Samuel and Wendelken are younger, less experienced at this level, and each found a way through a match that could easily have gone the other way. Dart, seeded third in Australian Open qualifying earlier this year, is trying to climb back toward the main-tour ranking she recently held.
One more win each, and all four will join the 128-player main draws at Flushing Meadows — the hard-court tournament that closes the Grand Slam season, beginning in the coming days.
