Why Wimbledon qualifying remains a secret treasure for players and fans

After so many British tennis summers, Dan Evans was not expecting to be dipping himself into an ice bath halfway through what proved to be the last singles match of his career. But on the third day of qualifying for Wimbledon 2026, a power outage downed the electronic line-calling system that judges whether shots are in or out, causing matches across 18 courts to be suspended for over an hour. In soaring temperatures, which reached a high of 95 degrees, competitors bidding to make it into the th