sport news Mimi Xu is looking to become the youngest Brit to play Wimbledon in a CENTURY ... trends now
It’s a measure of how Mimi Xu is not here to make up the numbers that she is quite clearly devastated to have lost to a former US Open semi-finalist.
She is 14 and has been facing Yanina Wickmayer, a Belgian former world No 12 more than twice her age, demonstrating a 100mph serve and deep, searching forehand.
Xu’s formative step into senior competition, though, at last week’s ITF Women’s World Tour event in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, ended with a 6-2, 6-2 defeat.
Mimi Xu can qualify for Wimbledon aged just 14, a year younger than Annabel Croft was in 1981
‘I guess the difference is the experience they’ve got and also knowing you have to maintain that level, knowing that it’s a big step,’ she says, with confidence beyond her years. ‘But my game’s there. It’s about knowing that I don’t need to do too much different.’
It is Xu’s physical presence on the court which is most striking. She certainly doesn’t look like a Year 10 pupil, cast in a senior elite tennis environment. Her hour on court with Wickmayer provides insight into how she has recently managed to win the Under 18 National Championship while four years beneath that age.
Her power is the most noticeable aspect. Briefly, Wickmayer seems to sense the potential for headlines and looks rattled. She is infuriated by a judge’s line call early in the match. Xu’s errors — most fatefully a double fault and netted elementary forehand in the second set — point to an inevitable need for more time at this level.
As well as potentially play at Wimbledon this summer Xu will take two of her GCSE exams
Yanina Wickmayer, 32, is currently ranked World No 670 having previously been as low as 12
She is about to get considerably more. Xu’s Under 18 British title, secured in April after a final against a 16-year-old from Leicestershire, means she will play senior Wimbledon qualifiers this week.
Were she to win, she would become the youngest British player to compete at Wimbledon in the post-1968 Open era and — though early 20th-century records are sketchy — possibly the youngest to do so in more than 100 years.
Very few, if any, British players this young have appeared at the Roehampton qualifiers. Annabel Croft was 15 when she won through to the main draw that way in 1981. The USA’s Coco Gauff was 15 years and 122 days old when she came
