Tatjana Maria questions Queen’s wildcard snub after qualifying fightback

Tatjana Maria had to earn her way back into Queen’s the hard way, winning twice in one day just to reach the main draw as the reigning women’s champion was left outside the wildcard list. After rain forced qualifying onto Sunday, the German beat Briton Lily Miyazaki 6-2, 1-6, 6-2 and then Kamilla Rakhimova 6-4, 6-3 to secure her place at the HSBC Championships.

The decision to make Maria qualify cut sharply against the image Queen’s cultivated a year earlier, when women’s tennis returned to the club for the first time since 1973 and Maria lifted the title. She became the oldest winner of a WTA 500 title at 37, beating Amanda Anisimova in the 2025 final, and was rewarded with honorary lifetime membership. This year, though, her ranking, around world No. 52 to No. 54, left her below the direct-entry cutoff for the 28-player main draw.

Maria said she expected a wildcard because her victory had come only last year and because she believed a defending champion deserved that status. Tournament director Laura Robson told her all four women’s singles wildcards would go to British players instead. Those places went to Katie Boulter, Francesca Jones, Harriet Dart and teenager Mika Stojsavljevic, underlining how heavily the event leaned into home representation.

That choice stirred unease beyond Maria’s own camp. Maria said members at Queen’s told her they did not understand why she had not been given a wildcard, and spectators have already responded warmly to her return. Her husband, Charles-Édouard Maria, and daughters Charlotte and Cecilia were visible parts of last year’s title run and again formed part of her motivation this week as she fought back through qualifying.

The episode also revived a wider grievance in Maria’s career: the lost ranking momentum from her 2022 Wimbledon semi-final. That remains her best Grand Slam result, but because no ranking points were awarded at Wimbledon that year amid the ban on players from Russia and Belarus, she missed the boost that would ordinarily have followed such a run. At Queen’s, where she had already delivered one of the event’s defining wins, the message from the club’s wildcard decision was hard to miss. Maria was welcome enough to defend her title, but not important enough to skip qualifying.