An unreturnable serve sealed the match \u2013 and Matt Barton\u2019s progression through to the main draw at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n
The Australian produced a stellar performance to knock off No.1 seed Karen Khachanov 7-6(1) 6-7(1) 6-2 6-3 on Friday in the final round of qualifying, a result which sent him through to the main draw of a Grand Slam for the first time in his career.<\/p>\n
Barton only just scraped in to the qualifying event\u00a0at Roehampton \u2013 he was the last direct acceptance into the draw just minutes before the entry deadline closed.<\/p>\n
And on Friday he was across the net from one of the tournament\u2019s most highly-rated players, ranked 150 places higher than Barton as well as being\u00a0one of the faces of the ATP\u2019s #NextGen campaign.<\/p>\n
Having never played an officially-sanctioned five-set match, nor having advanced this far previously in a major qualifying tournament, the New South Welshman\u00a0nonetheless rose to the occasion to achieve the biggest result of his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just can\u2019t believe I won. It\u2019s a pretty amazing achievement for me, against the No.1 seed. I didn\u2019t expect to win, so yeah, over the moon,\u201d said Barton, who broke down in tears after the win.<\/p>\n
\u201cNever (been to the All England Club). So it\u2019s going to be first time ever. That was my first five-setter. It\u2019s gonna be my first (Grand Slam) main draw. It\u2019s pretty emotional.\u201d<\/p>\n
The match, originally scheduled for Thursday, was held over to Friday due to persistent rain in London.<\/p>\n
With 48 hours to ruminate about the upcoming match, Barton could perhaps have been excused for letting the occasion overwhelm him.<\/p>\n
But the 24-year-old instead was a picture of calm and steadiness throughout the match.<\/p>\n
His serve firing, his back-court game clicking and his shots finding the mark, he powered through a near-perfect opening-set tiebreak.<\/p>\n
When Khachanov stormed through the second-set tiebreak in similarly-dominant fashion, the match has suddenly taken a very different direction.<\/p>\n
Yet against the tide, Barton responded, breaking serve in the sixth game to open a 4-2 lead and doing so again in the eighth game, blasting three winners in a sparkling stretch to cement a two-sets-to-one lead.<\/p>\n
In the fourth set, a disastrous sixth game for Khachanov \u2013 ending\u00a0on a backhand error \u2013 saw the Russian broken to love.<\/p>\n
From that point,\u00a0Barton never looked like relinquishing his advantage. Remaining loose and continuing to go for his shots, he powered through his next service game for\u00a0a 5-2, and two games later, when serving for it, played a solid game to close it out.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I\u2019m pretty calm out there when I play, so that helps me a lot, and I just went with it. I mean, I just tried to do my best and try my hardest and see what happened,\u201d Barton said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought I served really well. I just knew that playing on grass, try and serve as best as I could and I managed to do that. I didn\u2019t get broken all match, not that I can remember, so that was the key thing. Just took care of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen got a bit lucky there in the third and fourth to break him, and that was it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to\u00a0Barton\u2019s entry into the tournament being an eleventh-hour scenario, the Australian was forced to overcome physical hurdles once there.<\/p>\n
After slipping three times in his first-round win and injuring his foot, intense treatment was required to get him through the subsequent rounds.<\/p>\n
That process gave him something to focus on as he was forced to wait to compete in the most significant match of his career to date.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just prepared as best as I could, especially my ankle. Got it strapped, been treating it, getting a lot of treatment from the physios, so just making sure to try and get it 100 per cent. That was the main thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew my body\u2019s fit and can go the distance. I\u2019m just relieved. I can\u2019t believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An unreturnable serve sealed the match \u2013 and Matt Barton\u2019s progression through to the main draw at Wimbledon. The Australian produced a stellar performance to knock off No.1 seed Karen Khachanov 7-6(1) 6-7(1) 6-2 6-3 on Friday in the final round of qualifying, a result which sent him through to the main draw of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5788,"featured_media":11854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11852","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\/11852","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=11852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}