British Wild Cards Announced

Pictured: Amarni Banks, who enjoyed an excellent run to the final of the W100 Shrewsbury last year, is one of four British players to receive main draw wild cards. Picture: Richard Dawson Photography.  

Amarni Banks, runner-up at The Shrewsbury Club last year, is one of four British players to receive main draw wild cards for the Lexus W100 Shrewsbury ahead of the tournament starting this weekend. Jodie Burrage, Hannah Klugman and Mingge Xu have also been given wild cards for the prestigious ITF World Tennis Tour event.

The first qualifying round for the biggest women’s tennis tournament, outside of the grass court season, to be played in the UK this year, takes place on Sunday, with main draw matches getting under way next Tuesday.

Banks, the British number eight, enjoyed an excellent run in Shrewsbury last year. She beat a number of higher-ranked players before eventually losing in the final to Viktorija Golubic. Burrage, who was ranked as high as 85 in the world last September, has recently returned from injury.

Klugman hit the headlines in Shrewsbury last year when, at the age of 14, she became the youngest player to qualify for a W100 tournament on the ITF World Tennis Tour, beating the record set by former US Open champion Coco Gauff. Klugman went on to reach the quarter-finals.

Xu, who turned 17 earlier this month, is another promising British player and impressively progressed to the semi-finals of the US Open girls’ singles in New York last month. She also played in this year's girls’ doubles final at Wimbledon.

The four wild cards join two more British players - Sonay Kartal and Heather Watson - in the main draw of the Lexus W100 Shrewsbury. They could be joined by even more British players with the qualifying round likely to see another 10 British players in action, all vying for a place in the main draw. Those players include Freya Christie who always seems to enjoy the courts at Shrewsbury making two singels finals and three doubles finals, picking up the trophy with Harriet Dart back in 2018.