![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2026-harry-wendelken-hsbc-championships-r1.jpg\")
<\/p>\nFor Pinnington Jones, it\u2019s a difficult loss, having led twice in the third set and being 30-0 up serving for the match. The British star can leave proud of his performance, having gone toe-to-toe with a former Wimbledon semi-finalist and junior Wimbledon champion.<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old was making his debut at The Queen\u2019s Club this week in only his second ATP 500 tournament. His only previous event came earlier this year, where he made the quarter-finals in Houston, including a victory over Roland Garros runner-up Flavio Cobolli.<\/p>\n
The world No.147 will turn his attention to the last remaining tournaments of the grass court season and will be hoping to return to Wimbledon, where he got his first Grand Slam victory last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really stings not being able to get over the line but overall I\u2019m happy with my performance today,\u201d Pinnington Jones said. \u201cI will look to build on it for the rest of the grass court season and into the rest of the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to thank the LTA and tournament for the opportunity – it was a dream to play on such a special court with the home crowd behind me.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In a similar fashion, 24-year-old Wendelken also had his chances against 2022 semi-finalist Botic van de Zandschulp in the first match of the day on the Andy Murray Arena.<\/p>\n
The British qualifier had three break points at 5-5 in the second set and led 5-2 in the tie-break, but couldn\u2019t force the match to a decider.<\/p>\n
The Dutchman used all his experience to win the final five points of the match and come through 6-4, 7-6(5).<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a very difficult match, especially from a guy who plays well on grass,\u201d Van de Zandschulp said of Wendelken after the match.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always tough to play a Brit here but always good to get the first win on grass. I didn\u2019t know Harry before so you don\u2019t know what he\u2019s going to do on the important points but I think I handled it quite well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wendelken picked up two top-100 wins in qualifying for his first ATP 500 main draw this week \u2013 adding to his grass court victory in Birmingham two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s made three ATP Challenger finals since March and is one of the in-form players rising through the ranks at the moment.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow, Britain\u2019s Cam Norrie<\/a> faces fourth seed Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, and wild cards Arthur Fery<\/a> and Toby Samuel meet in the first round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Pinnington Jones, it\u2019s a difficult loss, having led twice in the third set and being 30-0 up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-643100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}