James Ward, the British number four, once had to sell his Arsenal season ticket to fund his tennis career. On Thursday the son of a Camden cabbie cruised into Wimbledon’s third round, securing himself at least £77,000 from this year’s tournament and a coveted place in the world top 100.
After a four-set victory over Czech Jiri Vesely, ranked 66 places above him, the 28-year-old said winning his next match, at the weekend, “would probably be like Arsenal winning the league next year, to be honest. After that we start thinking about Champions League finals. But let’s think about Saturday first.” It will be his first appearance in the third round of a grand slam.
Though the money wasn’t his motivation on a warm, cloudy afternoon on court 2, Ward said: “Everyone’s got bills to pay. I’m no different to anyone else in this tournament who is in this position.”
Despite being a former British number two who still considers himself the second-best player in the country, the riches that tennis lavishes on its very top players have not filtered down to Ward, who was stripped of his LTA funding in 2013, forcing him to pay for his own coaching and travel from his prize money – a career total of just over £540,000 – with support from his father.
Like Andy Murray, Ward moved to Spain as a teenager to train at an elite academy. His mother and sister moved with him for the four years he was there, while his father stayed in north London working every hour possible to support the family. “He would go on for months without seeing us,” the player has said. “It was not easy on the whole family.”
Asked on Thursday about his father, who watched his match courtside, Ward said: “A lot of people have met my dad throughout the years. Everyone loves him. He’s always there to support. Yeah, I just can’t thank him enough, really.”
Jim Ward said: “We are extremely pleased. This will put him in the top 100 so we are over the moon about that. He played very well. We’re very proud.”
Ward has noted in the past the discrepancy between football – in which an elite player of his rank would be lavishly remunerated – and the resources available in his sport. “It’s unfair sometimes. If I was one of the top … footballers in the world I’d be earning a serious living. But I’m not. You do everything yourself: hotels, flights, accommodation – everything. It’s your own business and you have to take care of yourself.”
Asked about the LTA funding loss, he said: “It’s no secret that the money is not great in tennis compared to most other sports. It’s in the grand slams where you need to do well and you earn money.”
His climb in the rankings means the UK has three players in the top 100 – the others are Murray and Aljaz Bedene – for the first time since 2006.
Shortly after Ward dispatched Vesely, Murray joined him in the third round with a straight-sets victory over Robin Haase of the Netherlands. But Slovenian-born Bedene, who has lived in the UK for seven years and received a British passport in March, was defeated in his second-round match against Serbia’s Viktor Troicki.
With Heather Watson also in the third round, this is first time Britain has had three players at this stage of the tournament since 2002.
Ward said Murray, with whom he occasionally stays when he is in Miami, where the Scotsman trains, had been “a great help to me and I’m grateful for that. He’s just a good friend above all. We get on really well. We have a lot of the same interests as well outside of tennis.”
He added: “He’s always there supporting, he’s always watching matches. He follows live streams of Challengers [the second-tier men’s tour events], is always there to send you a message when you’ve done well or pick you up when you need a bit of support. A lot of stuff that he does and says really doesn’t get reported that much.”
Ward has tended to perform better in Davis Cup events than on the men’s tour, notching a heroic five-set win over John Isner in Britain’s victory over the United States in May. His Australian coach, Darren Tandy, flew to Glasgow from his home in Perth for that tie to find out what it was about team tennis that so inspired him.
Murray said it was important for him to support the other British players throughout the year. “But I’m not just doing it [because] I want to help them, I’m doing it because I’m friends with them, I get on well with them, they’re people I like. I genuinely care whether they win or lose the matches.”
