Jordan Thompson came into Wimbledon with a large box of painkillers, a thick black brace for his back, and a dream that somehow he would defy his body long enough to make an impact at the tournament he loves so much. Two titanic five-set matches later, the Sydneysider is still standing on the green lawns of SW19, just.
With Davis Cup captain Lleyton Hewitt, the last Australian man to win at Wimbledon, watching on, Thompson beat Benjamin Bonzi 7-5, 6-7 (2-7), 4-6, 6-2, 6-4 in nine minutes shy of four hours. After Bonzi hit a return into the net on the second match point, Thompson let out a primal scream into the evening sky, smiled and pointed to his heart.
“Everyone the whole week has just told me to show some ticker, so I just pointed to it and said, that’s some fucking ticker,” said Thompson, adding the gesture was aimed at Hewitt, who often used the phrase himself and had been demanding it from Thompson.
After his first-round defeat of Vit Kopriva, when he came from two sets down, Thompson looked shattered, said he was not enjoying himself, and wondered aloud if he would even be able to start Wednesday’s match. He is now proud of himself, but still not enjoying it.
“The only thing that brought me a smile is the win and the fact that I didn’t have to be out there anymore because it was so tough,” Thompson said. “It’s frustrating. There’s movements I can’t do, but the competitive juices are keeping me going. It’s not just the back, it’s everything. I’m super stiff. I’m not practising, but I keep moving and I’m having lots of treatment, yoga, core.”
Having hauled himself on to Court 15, Thompson found 31-year-old Bonzi facing him, the 64th-ranked Frenchman who had shocked last year’s semi-finalist Daniil Medvedev in the first round.
Thompson, ranked No 44 after an injury-hit season that has led to him sliding out of the top 30, is a better player than the 29-year-old from Nimes, especially on grass, and to start with it showed. At 5-5 he set up two break points with a pair of superb volleys. Having broken, he then came back from 0-30 on his own serve before taking the set with a sweet passing shot.
But Bonzi changed his game, driving Thompson back to limit the doubles ace’s chance to show his volleying prowess. The second set went with serve, then Bonzi won five successive points to seize control of the tiebreak. He followed up with a break at 3-3 in the third, from which he served out.
At that stage Thompson looked done. But more than most he is a player who leaves it all out there. In the fourth he broke at 3-2, and held on to level the tie. The final set could have gone either way as both men battled fatigue and the setting sun. Each had break-point chances. Crucially, at 5-5, with a tiebreak looming, Thompson held, then broke.
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He next meets Luciano Darderi, ranked No 59, or Arthur Fery, the lowly ranked English wildcard who upset Alexei Popyrin in the first round. The pair were locked at one set apiece when fading light caused their match to be suspended.
Victory would take Thompson into the second week and a last-16 place for the first time in his ninth visit to Wimbledon.
“It’s hard not to see it as a pretty big opportunity at this stage of a slam,” he admitted. “There’s no beating around the bush. It could be a lot worse. I just wish my body was in a different circumstance.”
