The All England Club on Wednesday "deferred all questions" on whether Maria Sharapova will receive a wildcard to Wimbledon, according to Simon Briggs of the London TELEGRAPH. All England Club CEO Richard Lewis said, "The tennis sub-committee will meet on the 20th of June, and will consider the application along with the others if that's what it comes to." The club is "already preparing for the challenges that Sharapova would create" if she entered its qualifying tournament, which is staged every year at Roehampton's Bank of England Sports Ground. For the first time, entry to Wimbledon qualifying "will not be free this year, and the number of spectators on the Roehampton site will be capped at just 1,000." Lewis: "Last year, we were faced with queues to get in the ground. We don't know the facts of Sharapova, so we made the decision regardless. Qualifying has been moving in that direction anyway for the last few years now and it has become more and more popular. The security aspect last year made it inevitable" (TELEGRAPH, 5/3).
NOT WELCOME: REUTERS' Martyn Herman reported organizers said that former Romanian tennis player Ilie Nastase "will not be welcome at this year's Wimbledon championships and could be stopped at the gate if he tries to attend." The 70-year-old former French and US Open champion is "provisionally banned" from all Int'l Tennis Federation events after "hurling allegedly racist and sexist comments during Romania's Fed Cup tie with Britain last month." All England Club Chair Philip Brook said that he "condemned" Nastase's behavior. Brook: "In terms of an invitation to the Royal Box, he won't receive one this year." Lewis "went further," saying that Nastase "could be stopped at the gate" if he tried to enter the grounds with a ticket (REUTERS, 5/3).
