Wimbledon: Novak achieves first victory with Major

Qualifier Dennis Novak has continued his winning streak at the Wimbledon tournament and is in the second round of a Grand Slam event for the first time in his career. On Wednesday, Lucas Pouille (France), who will be seated at position 17 and supervised by Tommy Haas, will be waiting there.

By Ulrike Weinrich from Wimbledon

After 1:49 hours Novak turned his first match point into a 6:2, 6:3, 7:6 (9:7) against the Canadian Peter Polansky, who had already created a curiosity at the world’s most important tennis tournament. For the third time in a row, the 30-year-old qualified as a Lucky Loser for the main field with a Major. Lucky guy, the man from Toronto. You’d think.

But in the duel with the extremely concentrated Novak (ATP No. 171), Polansky, who was 61 ranks higher in the world rankings, had a hard time. The Austrian from Lower Austria, who defended three set points in the tie-break of the third round, could clearly see his self-confidence after his three qualifying wins without losing a set at unusual Wimbledon temperatures of almost 30 degrees Celsius.

Last week, Novak had defeated the American Donald Young, who was already ranked 38th at the outsourced facility in Roehampton. For the second time he made it into the main field of a Grand Slam. In Australia, the 24-year-old from Bad Vöslau failed in his first match after passing the qualifying round against ATP World Champion Grigor Dimitrov (Bulgaria) – in three sets, on the big stage. But no one takes the valuable experiences from this comparison away from him.

Novak and Polansky finished 5th in the shadow of the famous Centre Court with a delay of several minutes. At that time, the first “official” balls of this year’s grass court classic had already been played on 14 other courts in the Tennis Cathedral in southwest London.

And Austria’s number four underlined its strong form from the very beginning. Two service games won to zero were a first statement from the man with the tattoos. The Günter-Bresnik protégé used his second break point for 3-1, but a little later Novak was rewarded for his courage when he threatened to lose his own service game, but he forced Polansky to make a mistake with a brave forehand.

After only 23 minutes and with new balls, the Austrian Davis Cup player broke through the service of the Canadian again. After a backhand along the line and winning the opening round Novak showed the winner’s fist. One statistic was particularly meaningful: While Novak won 86 percent of the points after the second serve (75 percent for the first service), Polansky achieved only 29 percent. Also from the baseline Novak was the clearly superior.

French Open finalist Dominic Thiem, who will play Marcos Baghdatis (Cyprus) on Tuesday, had already predicted that his good buddy Dennis would also feel at home in the main draw on Church Road. “Dennis was born with how to play on grass,” Thiem said and added at SkySportAustria: “He’s been on the surface so naturally since junior years.”

This became clear in the course of the game against Polansky. The supposed preliminary decision was made when Novak took the 2-0 lead at the beginning of the third set and won the match at 5-4. But Polansky could finally use his tenth (!) break point.

However, the Austrian kept his cool in the decisive phases, fended off three set points in the tie-break – and can now dream of further coups and very personal milestones in the turf Mecca.