ROEHAMPTON, England -- First, the rain fell. Hard. Then, the British pound fell. Harder.
Those successive events Thursday and Friday, caused by clouds and then Britain's voting to leave the European Union, washed away a chunk of the earnings of players who lost in the final round of Wimbledon qualifying. Play had been scheduled to finish Thursday, but it was postponed to Friday because of persistent rain.
Had the rain held off, allowing matches to finish as scheduled at the Bank of England Sports Grounds, the prize money, paid by Wimbledon in pounds, would have been transferred into players' foreign checking accounts at significantly higher rates. The one-day delay saw the pound fall from a Thursday average of around $1.49 to $1.37 on Friday (bottoming out at $1.32 early Friday).
The plunge, which pushed the pound to its lowest value in 31 years, devalued a prize of 15,000 pounds for the losers that, when converted into U.S. dollars, fell from $22,350 to $20,550. For players transferring from the pound to the also-crashing euro, the fall was from about 1.31 euros to 1.24, but still enough to result in an overnight loss of 1,050 euros.
Once a player is eliminated from a tournament, he or she visits the prize money desk, where the money is wired to a bank account. A paper check is also an option but rarely chosen by players.
Gerald Melzer, an Austrian whose match began Thursday but did not end until Friday, had followed the referendum and the pound's ensuing drop, and had already done the math for himself.
"A thousand more," Melzer, ranked 107th, said of the euros he would have earned by losing more quickly. "Yeah, I knew that, I did. A thousand euros is a thousand euros, it's not like losing 2 euros. So yeah, it hurts."
Yannick Mertens of Belgium, another player who lost Friday, expressed a sense of helplessness.
"We lose money in one day without doing anything," the 220th-ranked Mertens said. "For us, it's a bad decision, but there's nothing we can do about it. For sure it's not positive for us."
While the pound's drop will be felt by players in the main draw of Wimbledon as well, the lower-earning players in the qualifying draw are most sensitive to devaluations. The American Austin Krajicek, who like Melzer would have cut his losses by losing Thursday, said he believed that players at his level of the sport, who rely on the major tournaments to provide larger percentages of their annual earnings, were more sensitive to exchange-rate changes. For him, the swift change meant a loss of $1,800.
"It's huge; every penny counts at this level," the 131st-ranked Krajicek said. "We're not making big money like the top guys, so every dollar counts."
Krajicek said he also noticed a less sudden drop-off when he played in Australia this January, where the Australian dollar has weakened in comparison to the U.S. dollar.
"Especially for us, eating dinners and staying at hotels, and with everything that we buy, it makes a big difference for us," he said. "England is usually pretty expensive with the pound, but yeah, that's tough with the prize money today."
Mohamed Safwat of Egypt, who has struggled because of his country's declining currency in recent years, now trains in Austria, which means he has to pay his expenses in euros. The loss of 1,050 euros, in his eyes, damaged his tennis more than his wallet, because it might prevent him from being able to pay for the best coaches.
"The more I win in the tournament with the prize money and the money from a sponsor, the more I'm investing in myself," said Safwat, who is ranked 219th. "I don't keep a cent for just me. Everything, I put it into tennis."
Safwat's winnings of 15,000 pounds, despite its devaluation, is his best at one event on tour. Safwat said despite his often precarious finances he was not tempted to give up competing.
"If I quit tennis, if I stop, I can make lots of money coaching; I can be a millionaire," he said. "I'm getting offers to coach kids for 150 euros an hour. I don't want to do that; that's not me. I have a dream, I have a target, I have a lot of people supporting me. Later on, yes, I can help the kids, but it's not about making money, money, money."
Sports on 06/25/2016