Jack Pinnington Jones enjoyed a dream start at this year’s Wimbledon Championships.
The British wildcard was a firm underdog against world number 53 Tomas Etcheverry but produced a marvellous display to defeat the Argentinian 7-6 6-3 7-5.
Pinnington Jones is one of many British players left in the men’s main draw, alongside Jack Draper and Arthur Fery.
Speaking after the momentous victory, the Brit relayed some ‘blunt’ coaching advice he received before the match.
The blunt advice Jack Pinnington Jones received before beating Tomas Etcheverry
Speaking to the BBC on Tuesday evening, Pinnington Jones revealed the advice his coach gave him before his Wimbledon first round victory, which focused on a visit to a public house.
Pinnington Jones said: “There’s a lot of expectation, you want to do really well. I’ve got so many friends and family watching.
But me and my coach had a chat before the match and he sort of said it really bluntly, ‘you’re a wildcard, the worst thing that happens is you’re at the Rose and Crown later with all your family celebrating an amazing grass court season.
“When he sort of put it like that in perspective, I sort of felt like I had nothing to lose and I was just going to try my best and if I came off the court doing that I was just going to be happy no matter what the result was.”
The Brit performed superbly on serve against Etcheverry, firing down 11 aces while winning 83 per cent of his first serve points.
The 22-year-old also put plenty of pressure on the Etcheverry serve, engineering 13 break-point opportunities across the match.
Jack Pinnington Jones says winning at Wimbledon a ‘childhood dream’
Pinnington Jones spoke to BBC Radio 5 Live on Tuesday evening, describing the victory as a ‘childhood dream.’
He said: “It’s so special to win a match here at Wimbledon in the main draw.
“It’s my childhood dream, so to get it done on my first attempt is unbelievable. It couldn’t be a much better day at all than this really.”
“I have rough images of watching Andy [Murray] when I was very young on the TV playing in Wimbledon, so maybe that sort of time, maybe when I was nine or 10 [years old] I thought ‘ah that would be amazing.’
“Then I basically came to Wimbledon every year from, I don’t know, from whenever I was 10 to 14, whenever I could. [I] just wanted to come and watch the tennis and was just obsessed with it so to actually manage to get a singles match here and win it, is just unbelievable.
“I can’t even describe it.
The Brit has set up a second round match with Italian 22nd seed Flavio Cobolli. If he wins, Pinnington Jones will face either Marcos Giron or Jakub Mensik, who recently revealed he barely played on grass courts when he was younger.
