Marietta teen pulls off Wimbledon upset

Thursday afternoon, Melanie Oudin will practice, eat lunch and wait in the players’ lounge at the All England Club and hope the biggest match of her career comes quickly.

Oudin, 17, from Marietta and arguably the most promising female player ever to come from Georgia, has a second-round match in the women’s tournament at Wimbledon.

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AJC File

Melanie Oudin advanced to the second round at Wimbledon.

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“[Thursday] is another match,” Oudin said by telephone Wednesday from England. “I’m not going to think about, ‘I’m in the second round of Wimbledon,’ because then I would get really nervous.”

Oudin, who made it into the Wimbledon field by winning three rounds of qualifying matches, upset Sybille Bammer of Austria, 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 on Tuesday. It was Oudin’s first victory in the main draw of a Grand Slam tournament. She had previously lost opening-round matches at the U.S. and Australian opens.

Shortly after, Leslie Oudin’s phone rang in Marietta.

“‘Mom! Mom! I won! I won!’” Leslie said her daughter reported from England.

With the win, Oudin (pronounced oo-DAN) is expected to break into the WTA’s top 100 for the first time in her career, a goal she had set for herself since at last year’s U.S. Open. Oudin, who turned professional last year, is ranked No. 124. At 17 years and nine months, she is the youngest player in the top 200.

“She can play with these girls,” said her coach Brian deVilliers, a director at Racquet Club of the South in Norcross. “I think she believes that now.”

Her win over Bammer — her second within a year over the player ranked No. 26 in the world — aside, she has reason for confidence. She beat the world’s then-No. 29 player, Aleksandra Wozniak, in April in Charleston, then won two smaller tournaments in May.

If she achieves a top-100 ranking, she will qualify for the U.S. Open in August.

In February, she was called upon to represent the United States against Argentina in the Federation Cup. After losing her first match, she pulled out a clutch three-setter to help the U.S. team to a 3-2 win.

The results are the product of daily three-hour practices, followed by an hour of fitness training.

“This is something she’s wanted since she was about nine years old,” Leslie Oudin said. “It’s very exciting for me to see her have progressed to this point.”

Oudin will play Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan on Court 12 at Wimbledon in the fourth match of the day on the court. It could start at around 6 p.m. local time (1 p.m. EDT) and won’t be televised.

Oudin’s mother, not to mention staff and members at their club, followed the first-round match as the scores were updated on the Wimbledon Web site.

“The first round is the toughest, for sure,” Oudin said. “Now I think that I’m going to feel a lot better [Thursday], playing a little less nervous and be able to be relaxed out there.”