Harriet Dart said she “only had herself to blame” after her devastating loss to China’s Wang Xinyu in the third round on Court No 2. While Wang is ranked 58 places above her, the British player was beaten as much by herself as her opponent. She had led in all three sets and was 3-0 up in the third, before dropping the last six games in succession to lose 2-6, 7-5, 6-3.
Making the second week of a grand slam has been Dart’s stated goal throughout 2024, and this defeat will hurt all the more because she was so close to it. “To be up in two sets and come away with a loss is pretty heartbreaking,” said Dart. “I had so many opportunities and I just didn’t take them … I don’t think I’m going to sleep very well tonight, that’s for sure.”
As her game imploded, her reactions were more expressive than her shotmaking. A ball into the net doubled her over in emotional agony. Returning to her chair between games, she whacked her bag with her racket. Asked what happened, Dart admitted she still didn’t know. “It kind of just unravelled really. It was the same in the second set. I was 3-1 up with a break, then got broken. It was just chaos.”
After her fraught three-setter against Katie Boulter, Dart’s emotions are becoming a character in their own right. And yet for most of the match here she looked more confident than her Chinese opponent, and her performance was far better than the one with which she bested Boulter on Thursday. Fluid and assertive, she smeared buttery-smooth backhands around the court, one that passed Wang’s racket with such insouciance you could almost hear it chuckle on the way by.
On a blustery No 2 Court, both players initially struggled to find the baseline, and a couple of mis-hits off Wang’s racket threatened to take down nearby satellites. But Dart was finding her rhythm, and 3-1 up in the first, when the day’s mercurial weather interrupted.
As the players left the court, spits of rain gave way to sunshine so bright that for a while the spectators kept their seats, optimistically slapping on sunglasses and sun cream.
In the end, an implacable cloud kept the players in the locker room for more than an hour. Dart maintained her momentum on the restart to take the first set.
Wang had seemed without answers, aside from a deadeye for line calls – a number of hawkish challenges helped keep her in the match. By halfway through the second set, however, the 22-year-old was showing signs of the toughness that had overcome the fifth seed, Jessica Pegula, to get here.
As Wang began to test Dart’s timid second serve, the British player began to show her nerves. At 5-4, Dart was only two points from victory when she muffed an easy volley. Unforced errors cost her the next game, and Wang tussled hard to force the decider.
Dart came out firing in the third set, spearing sumptuous groundstrokes to both sides of the court. At 30-15 in the final set another slow second serve enabled Wang to put the pressure back on, and after resisting two break points, Dart sent a sure winner straight into the net.
From there she handed Wang an all-access pass back into the match. Aborted tosses, a failed challenge and mis-hit backhands all spoke to Dart’s state of mind as her big chance squirted away. It is five years since she last made it this far in a grand slam – back in 2019, she came up against the world No 1 Ash Barty.
There is still mixed doubles for Dart to compete in, but she knows that she will have to learn lessons from this game about how to handle pressure. “Once this tournament is over for me, I guess I’ll reflect a little bit more. Right now it’s a little bit too close to home, just the loss being so raw and stuff. I’m just disappointed in myself.”
