Wimbledon wildcard Ryan Peniston is quickly emerging as one of Britain’s top hopes for success at SW19 this summer.
After easily defeating Henri Laaksonen in three sets on Court 12, fans are expected to flock to Court 3 early to secure the best seats for the 26-year-second-round old’s match against American rival Steve Johnson.
Peniston has already earned more than £146,000 in his last eight runs at Queens and Eastbourne this month. This will grow with each match he wins at Wimbledon, and he could more than double his earnings if he wins today’s match.
But his path to the All England Club’s iconic grass courts has been anything but easy – and life dealt him an early blow when he spent eight months in hospital as a baby fighting a rare cancer.
Peniston, from Great Wakering in Essex, underwent surgery and two rounds of chemotherapy after being diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a soft tissue cancer, at the age of one.
He later described the disease as having a “huge impact” on his life and making him a “late bloomer,” delaying his growth until he was 15 years old.
It meant that he was ‘always about a foot smaller than all my peers’ until he was in his mid-teens.
That presented its own set of difficulties for a new tennis player, he admitted.
‘They all were growing and getting bigger serves and everything. I was struggling just trying to run around and get the balls,’ he told the Times.
‘It made me definitely tougher as a player and a person I think. It’s a blessing in disguise really.’
But Peniston comes from a good, solid family. His ex-train driver father Paul, 66, said he was mostly in charge of coaching the Wimbledon wildcard ‘until 18 months ago,’ despite the fact that Peniston joined a tennis academy in France at the age of 13 before joining the University of Memphis tennis program.
Paul described teaching his three sons to play tennis in a local park and noticing Peniston’s natural abilities after a neighbor complained about him smacking apples across their fence with a tennis racket.
Surprisingly, the rest of his family works in healthcare. His mother, Penny, is also a ward manager, and one of his brothers, Sam, is a paediatric nurse. His other brother, Harry, is a junior doctor.
Penny described Peniston as a “determined fighter” who “doesn’t take anything for granted” and “just wants to work hard and play the tennis he enjoys the most.”
Despite the fact that he is a wildcard, Peniston is guaranteed at least £100,000 in prize money from this week alone.
Speaking after his first-round clash yesterday, Peniston said: ‘I’m waiting for someone to pinch me and wake up back in May sometime. I’m just loving every second of it, to be honest.’
He added: ‘After the tournament, I’m definitely going to celebrate with my family, and we’ll have a nice time together, for sure.
‘Every day in training I just thought about it and kind of visualised it,’ he said. ‘Even off the court as well, I’d be just like dreaming about it. For it to happen is just crazy for me.
‘When I was younger, like a teenager, you always have people ask, ‘You play tennis? I’ll see you at Wimbledon one day.’ I’d always say, ‘Yeah, yeah, hopefully, hopefully.’ Now to just say it’s happened is unbelievable.’