Play Your Way to Wimbledon Competition – Adults Competition – by Will Knight
The Play your Way to Wimbledon event is a great way for club level tennis players to reach where champions are crowned! Tim and I entered the event without thinking of reaching Wimbledon. After winning four competitive matches at TWTC, we reached the regional stage held at Salisbury TC without expectation. After a challenging first match, we grew in confidence and played some of our best tennis to reach the National Finals!
There was great excitement of playing at Wimbledon for the first time for the both of us. Neither of us had played on grass before, we were told to bend our knees more! Despite waiting all day to play our first match, we enjoyed watching the juniors battling it out plus supported fellow Wiltshire tennis players from Riverside. We were treated like professionals even though we are far from it! We were given a large goody-bag, food allowance and treated to a great museum tour.
Stepping onto the Wimbledon grass for the first time felt weird, but in a good way. On paper the group was tough with some of the highest WTN’S within the competition. Losing the first match on a championship tiebreak was hard, as we won the previous set to one, but the support from RWBTC and Riverside was great. Going into the second day, we wanted to leave with our heads held high, we managed to come back from behind to take the victory on another championship tiebreak. Our opponents were based at a grass court-based club so had a lot more experience on the surface than us. We finished 2nd in the group and sadly did not progress further.
We both had a great time at Wimbledon and an experience we will never forget. We recommend parents/ volunteers to organise the event at your local club for any of the age groups. We come from Trowbridge, a four-court club, and made it all the way to Wimbledon. If we can do it, so can anyone!’
Will Knight (Trowbridge Westbourne)
Play Your Way to Wimbledon Competition – Junior 14U Competition – by Harry Mitchelll
I played at Wimbledon last month in the ‘Play your Way to Wimbledon National Finals (PYWTW)’ for the 14U boys event. It was an amazing experience with such a good atmosphere as well as the tennis.  The staff at Wimbledon were all so helpful and they just made the event more enjoyable but the main tennis experience and playing on the courts was just so exciting and fun.
I qualified to play at Wimbledon by winning the PYWTW tournament at Swindon Tennis Club, in May. Then I had to win the Wiltshire final in June to be the County representative to go to the National finals.Â
The Finals had a group stage of 3 matches and then knock out (round of 32/16/8/4/2) with 48 boys competing, one from each county (County PYWTW winner) and 8 from Scotland/Wales. Playing on the Wimbledon grass was fabulous and by end of Day 4, I was still in the tournament having won all 7 matches progressing through the group stages and round of 32, then 16, etc until. I had to beat 3 of the event seeds on the way until I was in a Wimbledon final.
In the final, I had to face the event’s top seed (a UK ranked 10th player in 14U). This was on day 5. We had a proper umpire and line judge for the final and it was a very close match but unfortunately I lost 4-6, 4-6. But I go away with great memories of my 8 matches at Wimbledon and finalists voucher to spend in the Wimbledon shop 😊.
By Harry Mitchell
The results can be found on the Wimbledon website:
https://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/play_your_way_to_wimbledon/index.html
