Matthew Barton didn\u2019t even think he would be travelling to London for Wimbledon.<\/p>\n
The Australian, ranked just inside the world\u2019s top 250, was one place outside the cut-off for Wimbledon qualifying, until sneaking in as the last accepted player just as the entry deadline was closing.<\/p>\n
Now, he stands one win from the main draw of The Championships.<\/p>\n
The best Grand Slam result of his career was made possible by a commanding 6-3 6-4 victory over El Salvador\u2019s\u00a0Marcelo Arevelo on Wednesday\u00a0at Roehampton.<\/p>\n
Previously, the 24-year-old had never been beyond the second round of a major qualifying draw.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty surreal. I didn\u2019t expect it. I mean I was the last one in (the draw). I did not expect to play this at all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got an email about an hour before the deadline saying I was one out, and then half an hour later I was in, so it was really surprising. I\u2019m making the most of that (laughter).<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just great. Relieved really, to get the win. In the second set I had the chance to have\u00a0a big lead and I didn\u2019t take it and he hung in there and kept fighting hard, and I knew he was fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barton was feeling the effects of a foot injury \u2013 Achilles, to be precise \u2013 which he sustained through\u00a0several slips in his first-round win on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Yet he was able to keep points short thanks to big serving and his overwhelming back-court power, and closed out victory\u00a0in a brisk 54 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t\u00a0too confident this morning,\u201d he admitted, \u201cbut I\u2019ll get it iced up again and hopefully I\u2019ll be good for the next one.\u201d<\/p>\n
That next one comes against No.1 seed Karen Khachanov, who came through his second-round match against Enrique Lopez-Perez, 9-7 in the third.<\/p>\n
That match will be a best-of-five set affair; apart from the Australian Open Play-off, Barton said he had never played a five-set match in an officially sanctioned tournament.<\/p>\n
But given his improvements in the past six to 12 months \u2013 such as shaving 100 places off his ranking and picking up his first two ATP main draw wins earlier in 2016 \u2013 the New South Welshman is feeling good going into the biggest match of his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think (I\u2019m) just being more professional, with everything\u00a0that I do. I was always a bit sloppy with that, maybe, back when I was younger. And now just doing all the little things, the one percenters, I feel like\u00a0they\u2019re helping a lot at the moment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a big moment for me. I\u2019m pretty happy with how I\u2019ve done at the moment. Just looking\u00a0forward to the next round\u00a0\u2026\u00a0I\u2019m gonna be pretty pumped for that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Matthew Barton didn\u2019t even think he would be travelling to London for Wimbledon. The Australian, ranked just inside the world\u2019s top 250, was one place outside the cut-off for Wimbledon qualifying, until sneaking in as the last accepted player just as the entry deadline was closing. Now, he stands one win from the main draw […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5788,"featured_media":11836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5788"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}