Lin Dan, Ivanisevic, Clijsters: The best Wild Card winners ever

Wild cards are usually considered the lowest rung of players in any tournament draw. They don’t qualify, rather they are handed out the invitations on the basis of potential or emotional appeal, because simply put – their current rankings are not good enough to earn them a direct entry into tournament. So when Chinese badminton superstar Lin Dan waltzed his way to victory at the badminton world championships beating the Malaysian top seed and world number one Lee Chong Wei – there was some element of surprise. Not because we haven’t seen him do it before – in fact, he seems to have a hold over Lee when it comes to big tournaments, but simply because here was a guy who had been out of competitive badminton for almost a year, seen his ranking drop to 286 in the world and played just one tournament before the world championships. But his win showed that he had still not lost any of his touch or tactical awareness. [caption id=“attachment_1026197” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The Croatian state postal company launched stamps honouring Ivanisevic’s victory. Reuters[/caption] In most cases, wild cards create a flutter or two but very rarely do they go all the way. A winning run against the best athletes in the world is anything but easy especially when you have been out in the cold for a while. But even Lin’s win could not compare to Kye Sun-Hui’s gold in judo at the 1996 Summer Olympics. The 16-year-old North Korean Kye Sun triumphed over Japanese Ryoko Tamura, a twice world judo champion in the 48-kg class, who was on an 84-match unbeaten streak prior to her loss, becoming the youngest judoka to capture a gold medal at the Olympics or World Championships. The win was made extraordinary by the fact that the 1996 Olympics was the first time Kye Sun was competing outside of the country, and coming in, she had never heard of the already world-renowned Tamura. She also went on to win the silver medal in the -57kg division at the 2000 Games, and four years later she earned the -52kg bronze medal in Athens. But it all began there – in 1996 with a wild card. But when you talk wild cards, it is tennis and Goran Ivanisevic that come to mind almost instantly thanks to the Croatian’s 2001 victory at Wimbledon. Ivanisevic was a three-time Wimbledon finalist but his best days were past him. He was struggling with a shoulder injury and for a man whose game depended so much on his serve, that was a crushing blow. His ranking of 125th wasn’t even high enough to land a direct entry into the tournament. So a wild card was his only way in. And he didn’t disappoint organisers, upsetting Andy Roddick, Greg Rusedski, Marat Safin, Tim Henman and Pat Rafter (in the final) to win the title on People’s Monday in front of the best and perhaps most raucous crowd seen at the Centre Court at the All England Club. Here’s a stat that made the win even more impressive: of his seven victims, only one – first-round opponent Fredrik Jonsson – would never feature in the top four in the ATP rankings. You don’t expect lightning to strike twice. But in tennis, it did. In 2009, Kim Clijsters won the US Open tournament, after receiving a wild-card entry. Clijsters had not played a competitive tennis match in more than two years, she had a baby too. She had retired in May 2007 when she was ranked fourth in the world, a month before her 24th birthday, citing the strain of injuries and the upcoming marriage. “I look at the names, the entry list, and there’s a lot of girls I don’t know and a lot of names I can’t even pronounce,” Clijsters had said. The last mother to win a Grand Slam event was Evonne Goolagong, at Wimbledon in 1980 and as The Guardian put it after the win: it was ‘the mother of all comebacks.’ But tennis wasn’t done surprising us. In 2012, Jonathan Marray, not Murray, and Frederik Nielson won the 2012 Wimbledon Men’s Doubles after being picked as a wildcard entry. The duo were playing in only their fourth tournament together and beat fifth seeds Robert Lindstedt and Horia Tecau 4-6 6-4 7-6 6-7 6-3. Britain’s last men’s doubles winners were Patrick Hughes and Raymond Tuckey in 1936 - the same year Fred Perry claimed the last British win in the men’s singles. Marray was ranked 76 on the doubles circuit, with his highest singles ranking was 215 coming back in 2005. He was then playing on the ATP Challenger Tour. The result also had historical significance for Nielsen, who went one better than his grandfather Kurt, a two-time runner-up in the singles in the 1950s and the last Danish finalist at the All England Club. The pair only played together because Marray and his original partner, Canadian Adil Shamasdin, were not ranked high enough to get into the tournament in their own right. But still the wildest wild card has to be the man with the weird pants and the phenomenal tee shot, John Daly. The year was 1991, Daly had just joined the tour and he wasn’t good enough to get into the PGA Championship that year – not without a huge dollop of luck anyway. Daly was the ninth and final alternate for the Championship. Just days before the tournament, Zimbabwean Nick Price dropped out since his wife Sue was about to give birth. The eight other alternates could not make it to Crooked Stick Golf Club in time for the tournament. So Daly, playing just his third major, decided to go for it. It was all so sudden that he didn’t even have time to play a practice round on the difficult Crooked Stick course. He finished the tournament with scores of 69–67–69–71, giving him a three-stroke victory over Bruce Lietzke. Daly was subsequently named PGA Tour Rookie of the Year. He was also the first rookie to win a major title since Jerry Pate won the US Open in 1976. The win also earned him a lifelong cult following which didn’t abandon him no matter how wild he got.