Wimbledon: The key to a debt-free life

The organisers of Wimbledon, until this year, at least, have employed the common courtesy of giving British players - most of whom it could easily be argued don't warrant nor deserve such charity - a wildcard into its tournament.

The consequence of such a process has led to previous tournaments being peppered with stories of plucky Britons taking a game, or even a set off some of the top players (anyone remember when little known Miles McLagan took the first two sets off of Boris Becker in 1999?). Hell, some of them have even won one or two matches.

Largely though, it's been a pointless exercise; the phrase "and that ends British involvement in Wimbledon for another year" gets wheeled out on the first Wednesday and Sue Barker, John Lloyd and Andrew Castle proceed to have a massive debate back in the BBC studio during a rain delay to try and discover the answer to the golden question, 'Why are we so truly shocking in terms of world tennis?'

But, no longer. This year, Wimbledon has granted just two wildcards to Britain's players in the men's singles; one has gone to Jamie Baker, who is somewhat justified in his presence through a wildcard given his missing most of the season because of life-threatening illness - and the other to Alex Bogdanovic - a talented player, but known in the tennis world only for all of a couple of days as he floats into Wimbledon each year, and, almost as easily as he's got in, floats straight back out again.

I entirely support the notion that any British players who play at Wimbledon should be there on merit. Whilst it is customary for home Grand Slams to give the majority of their wildcards to homegrown players, in the case of the French, the Australian, and US Opens, all those countries have players who justify being given one. We, unequivocally, do not.

However, the importance of Wimbledon for home-grown players, particularly British ones, goes beyond tennis. It is also a matter of finance. Take Alexander Slabinsky, the British number five ranked at 329, who would, in previous years, have been a candidate for a wildcard at Wimbledon. He has spent this season in obscure parts of Uzbekistan, Russia, France and Portugal, and for all this, his biggest pay cheque from these events has been €730, and his total earnings this year have been just over €7,000. It doesn't take a genius to work out that Alexander's career is not financially viable - but if he'd been at Wimbledon, even if he'd been knocked out in the first round, he'd have won (or earned...or received) £10,000 - enough to wipe out a great deal of debts, and enough for him to continue to travel to the nethermost towns of Uzbekistan and Russia in search of valuable ranking points.

Whilst Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic et al earn millions on the tour from prize money and sponsorship deals, it's good to take a moment to consider that not all sport is like this. Some sportsmen, as is evident here, struggle to even earn a decent living.