{"id":669218,"date":"2026-07-02T05:13:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T05:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/669218\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T05:13:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T05:13:16","slug":"wimbledon-2026-jacob-fearnley-says-eastbourne-withdrawal-paid-off-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/669218\/","title":{"rendered":"Wimbledon 2026: Jacob Fearnley says Eastbourne withdrawal paid off"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jacob Fearnley says his stunning comeback win<\/a> over Alex Michelsen at Wimbledon justified his decision to pull out of Eastbourne last week with a back problem.<\/p>\n

The 24-year-old Scot beat the American 3-6 4-6 6-2 6-3 6-2 to set up a second-round match against Spain’s Jaume Munar.<\/p>\n

“Eastbourne is a big event, but I knew I wanted to be ready for Wimbledon and I wanted to play my best tennis at Wimbledon,” Fearnley told the BBC when looking forward to Thursday afternoon’s game on Court 12. <\/p>\n

“That’s why I made the decision and it paid off.”<\/p>\n

After reaching a career high of 49 after a rapid rise up the world rankings since emerging from college tennis two years ago, Fearnley has slipped to 159, not helped by recurring injury problems.<\/p>\n

“I actually feel really good and one of the things I was saying to the coach, I actually could have gone on for a few more sets out there,” he said.<\/p>\n

“So that’s pretty positive considering where I was a week ago. It wasn’t looking great for me in terms of the back.<\/p>\n

“So just really happy with the way I’ve been able to respond to that.<\/p>\n

“Obviously I had a rib injury, which took me out for two months, and the back’s a recurring thing, but it feels good and I’m really happy with where I am physically.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacob Fearnley says his stunning comeback win over Alex Michelsen at Wimbledon justified his decision to pull out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-669218","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\/669218","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=669218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}