Delgado is happy and safe

Jamie Delgado has seen all sides of the global tennis circuit in his years as a journeyman professional, but never experienced the extremes of recent weeks.

Last month the 29-year-old was trying to earn ranking points in Uzbekistan when he got caught up in the massacre in the town of Andijan and had to be evacuated by British Embassy staff.

Yesterday he was at Queen's Club where he beat French teenager Gael Monfils 6-2, 6-4 to reach the second round of the Stella Artois Championships.

Today he will take on another French wonderkid in Richard Gasquet and then head for practice courts in Raynes Park to contest the all-British playoffs for a wildcard into Wimbledon a week on Monday.

It is all a world away from his experience in Andijan, which he recalled after yesterday's 66-minute win. 'We could hear all these guns going off about a mile away and were told that there had been a prison breakout and that there was a lot of trouble.

'It was very scary because the fear was it could spread to where the tournament was being staged. We were told to go the club and spent the night there listening to shots being fired.'

Yesterday, he was hitting shots, not listening to them. His ability to take the ball early and strike it deep often wrong- footed his opponent and guaranteed him his year's biggest pay day of £3,910.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in