One-time champion Martina Hingis survived a real scare against 18-year-old British wildcard Naomi Cavaday on Court No.2 to move into the second round.
The teenager - world ranked number 232 – twice held match point against the 1997 champion and former world number one and for a while it appeared that the court known as the “Graveyard of Champions” would claim another victim.
Hingis eventually prevailed 6-7 (1-7), 7-5, 6-0 but it was only Cavaday’s inexperience on the brink of victory that saved the Swiss’ embarrassment, and Hingis will need to play better than this if she is go further than last year when she went out in the third round.
In a match which got under way two-and-three-quarter hours late thanks to rain, Cavaday – a left-hander who notched up her first and only Tour win last week in Birmingham – caused the number nine seed all sorts of problems.
It is ten years since Hingis won her sole Wimbledon title, becoming the youngest Open Era champion at 16 years, nine months and five days. That year, 1997, she won three of the four Slams with only Roland Garros eluding her. Back then, surely few would have believed 1997 would be her only Wimbledon title. There is, of course, time yet, but she is 26 now and hungry new names are coming through all the time.
Whether Cavaday turns out to be one of the names to be reckoned with in the long-term remains to be seen but on the evidence of today’s match she lacks no appetite for the battle.
For starters, having won the toss she intriguingly opted to receive, reflecting not only her own determination to attack but also Hingis’s occasional habit of starting slowly – exacerbated this time, naturally, by two months on the sidelines with an injured left hip.
But even so, not many expected to see Cavaday break to love in the very first game. Fewer would have forecast she would be 3-0 up with two breaks after seven minutes. Hingis got one break back, but Cavaday was in no mood to crumble. She was still gamely going at it, pounding the ball hard from the baseline with exactly the kind of grasscourt power game which can cause Hingis problems.
Hingis’s touch, meanwhile, was still uncertain, at one moment apparently cruising towards a love game on her serve, the next delivering double faults and requiring some ingenuity to get the game on the board. But at 3-4 Cavaday netted a simple forehand and the match was level.
From here Hingis should have won the set. Cavaday was producing some highly respectable ground strokes. At 4-5 when one such drifted out to give Hingis her first set point, the young Briton produced another to save it.
Then successive double faults from Cavaday gifted Hingis another opportunity, only for Cavaday again to save beautifully, this time with a passing shot which left Hingis stranded at the net.
The tie-break, when it came, was one-way traffic – just not in the direction that might have been anticipated. Cavaday took it 7-1, capturing the winning point when the umpire overruled on a Hingis smash which was originally called good by the line judge. With Hawk-Eye available only on Centre and No.1 Courts, Hingis was powerless to do anything but smile her disagreement.
At the start of the second set, Hingis immediately broke to love. Normal service, we presumed. But, no, Cavaday broke back, and, having surrendered her serve again for 1-2, broke the former world number one again to level at 4-4, then held for 5-4 to tumultuous applause.
Defeat suddenly reared its head at Hingis. Given the lowliness of Cavaday’s ranking, this was a potential loss every bit as embarrassing as Hingis's notorious 1999 first round defeat to Jelena Dokic when she was world number one.
At the worst possible moment, the Hingis serve wobbled again, and twice Cavaday was just a single point from victory. Once she netted the service return; once Hingis produced a winner; and both chances were gone. At 5-5 Hingis produced a superb drop shot and then a fluke to break before taking the set.
The story of the third set was short: Cavaday had run out of steam, mentally and physically. But she had already given Hingis a horrible scare.
Match Statistics
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