Ashlyn Krueger, a 22-year-old Texan who reached the top 30 last summer, hadn’t shown much form ahead of the grass season.
She was losing more than she had won. She fell out of the top 100 and had to play qualifying just to get into the main draw at Wimbledon. Now she’s the latest example of the tennis cliché about just needing one good week to turn everything around.
For Krueger, that week appears to have been at the Birmingham Open in England in early June, where she won five matches, including qualifiers, and lost in the semifinal to Nikola Bartůňková of the Czech Republic. The next week she won a WTA 125, the rung below the main tour, in Ilkley, also in England.
On to Wimbledon, where she has won another six matches, three in qualifying and three in the main draw, including yesterday’s 6-3, 6-2 defeat of Ukraine’s Daria Snigur.
Krueger is taller than 6 feet and plays a big game with a searing serve. Consistency has been the puzzle.
“It’s very difficult to work on that,” said Krueger, who has her childhood coach and mother guiding her at the moment, during an interview at Wimbledon. “I just think you kind of have to go into every match hoping and you put in a lot of work on the practice court day in and day out.”
