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Tennis Jargon Explained: How To Recognize Your Wild Cards From Your Lucky Losers

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  • Updated: February 10, 2018

Have you ever wondered what a wild card is and how they’re awarded?

Just which players play on the Challenger Tour?

And what actually is a lucky loser?

Don’t worry! Here is your simple guide to deciphering all of tennis’ most technical terms!

Wild Card

Every tournament will hand out a certain amount of berths to players who would not automatically qualify due to insufficient ranking points. These berths are known as wild cards.

Typically a tournament will give these berths to native players or promising youngsters who would benefit with being able to play a higher grade of the tournament than they may have previously experienced.

At this week’s Montpellier Open, a wild card was handed out to 23-year-old Calvin Hemery ranked 148. His ranking didn’t allow him an entry into the main draw of the competition but with the aid of wild card he was afforded crucial Tour level experience. Although he succumbed to defeat, it was only his fifth match at this level, and he’ll surely be grateful for the experience.

Some players will have the required ranking points but decide after the entry date that they wish to play a tournament. The tournament will review each late application and decide whether to grant the player a late wild card.

Qualifying

Not all players who want to play in a certain tournament will be given access to the first round. For those players unable to gain a main draw entry, they will have to go through a qualification round. At Grand Slam level, there are three rounds of qualification. On the ATP Tour, there is usually just two. Like any other tournament, qualifying is seeded.

While it requires a minimum of two games just to reach the main draw, the momentum it can bring can be fantastic. This week alone, two qualifiers have reached two different finals. In Ecuador, Roberto Carballes Baena came through qualifying to reach his first Tour-level final and will make a career-high of at least world number 88. Over in Bulgaria, Mirza Basic beat three-time Grand Slam champion Stan Wawrinka to reach the Sofia Open final. The qualifier has won six matches in a row, a seventh will see him crowned the victor in Sofia.

Lucky Loser

Which brings us handily to one of the less glamorous of terms but an important one for players nonetheless.

Should a player from the main draw drop out before the tournament has begun, then he will be replaced by the highest ranked player who failed to make it through the final round of qualifying. This theory is this that this method tops up the draw to its maximum capacity by replacing the player who’s dropping out with next strongest available player.

In some rare instances, these lucky losers have actually gone onto win the tournament they had failed to qualify for in the first instance. During last year’s Croatian Open, Andrey Rublev was knocked out in qualifying, only to be reinstated into the main draw a day later. He then went on to win the title, while only conceding a single set along the way. Lucky indeed.

Loser is lucky! Won my 1st ATP title🙏❤️ @croatiaopenumag #umag #teamrublev

A post shared by Andrey Rublev (@andreyrublev) on

Challenger Events

While the ATP World Tour sees the best of the best competing against one another, it’s not the only professional circuit in men’s tennis.

A secondary selection of tournaments that run alongside the main Tour events also exist. These tournaments, while less glamorous and financially rewarding, are a massive part of the progression and rehabilitation of the majority of players.

Challenger events offer players returning from injury and those with a low ranking to gain valuable match experience against players in a similar situation. Kei Nishikori used two Challenger events in January to gear himself up for his reintroduction in the main tour later this year. While this is a very high-profile example, it illustrates the effectiveness of the Challenger circuit in the professional game.

The Challenger Tour also produces some of the shots of the year that you might not usually get to see. Just take a look…

The Race to London

No, this isn’t a measure of the time it takes Britain’s workforce to get to the capital. Instead, the ATP Race to London is an annual record of how many ranking points each player currently has. The eight highest ranked players will qualify for the season-ending World Tour Finals at the O2 in London.

So how does this differ from the normal ranking system? Well, the classic ranking system totals up a player’s points from exactly a year previous to the current day. The Race to London ranking system is a record that simply lasts the calendar year. Once a New Year begins, it resets every player’s score back to zero.

 

Hopefully, that clarified any queries you might have about some of the tennis’ most troublesome terminology! Feel free to comment below for any more questions on the terms above or, if you’d like any terms that haven’t been covered, to be explained next time.

Hope it helped!

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Tom Merrett

ATP Writer & Analyst at The Runner Spots
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