Considering it took years for the Wimbledon crowd to genuinely embrace Andy Murray, Aljaz Bedene has made a decent start to winning hearts and minds in his first tournament at SW19 as a British player. After his epic first-round comeback victory against Radek Stepanek, a former world No8, the 25-year-old talked of the inspiration and emotion that competing in front of home fans gave him. On Thursday, he again played with passion and no little skill against Viktor Troicki, the 22nd seed, but the Serb came through in four competitive sets: 6-4, 3-6, 6-2, 6-4.
It would be hard to describe Court 12, where the match was contested in the late-afternoon sun, as a cauldron. But when Bedene broke Troicki’s serve early in the first set, the moment was greeted with a rousing: “Come on, Jazz!” Admittedly those particular spectators seemed drunk – and his first name is actually pronounced “Al-Yash” – but they seemed well-intentioned. As the match progressed, an unspoken consensus was reached on “Ally” as a nickname, with the call-and-response “Ally, Ally, Ally! Oi, oi, oi!” proving especially popular.
Troicki, you might say, could be cast as a villain of sorts: in 2013, he was given a doping ban for failing to provide a blood test at the Monte Carlo 1000 and he ended up being sidelined from the sport for 12 months. This time last year his ranking had plummeted to 847. But, on court, Troicki is difficult to really dislike. He wears mirrored shades and his facial expression mostly consists of a passable Robert de Niro impersonation, turning down the corners of his mouth, when a net cord or Hawk-Eye challenge goes against him.
There was scarcely a cigarette paper between the two players in the first two sets. Bedene, whose ranking of 75 makes him Britain’s No2, was dapper and impressively unhurried. According to the tennis annuals, he is 6ft, but he could pass for a couple of inches shorter, and he gives the ball an impressive whip.
If Bedene showed a weakness against Troicki, it was erratic shot selection at key points. As he served to stay in the first set, he attempted an ambitious drop shot from behind the baseline. Troicki, who had been out of sorts until then, snuck off with a set he scarcely deserved.
But Bedene, as he showed coming back from two sets to one down against Stepanek, clearly has pluck. (It should be a sadness for British fans – though maybe not for James Ward – that he is ineligible for the Davis Cup because of playing a couple of dead rubbers for his native Slovenia.) He remained positive, broke Troicki twice, and took the second set 6-3.
The following two sets were less tense, but Bedene kept plugging away and the crowd grew perversely more animated. Bedene, who grew up in Ljubljana, came to Britain first as an 18-year-old with his girlfriend, Kimalie, a pop star in the Slovenian girl group Foxy Teens. He has been a resident of Welwyn Garden City for seven years and, if that wasn’t proof already of his commitment to adopted country, he has turned out for Hertfordshire in county competitions. Bedene also impressed journalists at Wimbledon this week by being able to identify Tony Blackburn – he is bunking at the house of Tessa Wyatt, the disc jockey’s former wife, during the tournament.
“I loved it,” the softly spoken Bedene said afterwards. “And I just feel that next year I will be a different person for all the British people. They will get to know me more. It will be easier. Hopefully I will get to play on a little bit bigger court. Yeah, hopefully they will love me.”
Bedene may not have been able to follow Ward – and, of course, Andy Murray – into the third round, but his performances this week show a considerable progress. After losing his first eight matches at grand-slam tournaments, including his previous two appearances at Wimbledon, he has held his own against two wily, hardened opponents. Maybe we will look back on this week as the start of something special.
