The long road back leads Montgomery and Sawangkaew to Wimbledon

LONDON -- For Mananchaya Sawangkaew and Robin Montgomery, qualifying for Wimbledon this week was a chance to make up for lost time.

Montgomery rallied past Marina Bassols Ribera 3-6, 6-1, 6-1 to earn her second career main-draw berth at the All England Club. Sawangkaew followed with an even more dramatic comeback, saving three match points to defeat Oceane Dodin 5-7, 7-5, 6-1 after trailing 5-3 in the second set.

"After the match, all the things came out," said Sawangkaew, 23, who joins Thai compatriot Lanlana Tararudee in the main draw. "All the tears came out."

Her emotions are a reflection of the ups and downs she's experienced in her career over the past year -- a journey that Montgomery has also had to take. In mid-2025, both players seemed poised for great things.

They'd cracked that all-important Top 100 milestone -- big-serving Montgomery in April and the speedy, finesse-based Sawangkaew in June. But just as they thought they'd made it, they were sent spiraling back to square one.

As she served in her second Roland Garros qualifying match, Sawangkaew's back suddenly gave out.

"I couldn't move it," she recalled. "I had to start from zero because my body couldn't do anything. I couldn't even move my leg or sleep. For the first three months I couldn't even hit."

Sawangkaew spent the next six months sidelined by injury, filling the time by learning Thai songs on her guitar. But missing Wimbledon was the hardest part.

Growing up in a country with few grass courts, some of her earliest tennis memories were of watching Wimbledon on television and dreaming of one day "just standing on the grass." She also drew inspiration from fellow Thais such as Tamarine Tanasugarn, a Wimbledon quarterfinalist in 2008, and Noppawan Lertcheewakarn, the 2009 girls' champion.

Next week, Sawangkaew and Tararudee will become the first Thai women to compete in the Wimbledon main draw since Tanasugarn and Lertcheewakarn did so in 2010.

When Sawangkaew returned, her only goal was to play without pain again. Instead, she quickly exceeded her own expectations.

Although she says she is "not confident" she's back to her previous level, the results suggest otherwise. She won her first WTA 125 title in Mumbai in February, and despite missing six months, has slipped only from No. 100 a year ago to No. 164 this week.

With Wimbledon in mind, Sawangkaew took an even more deliberate approach this season, skipping the clay-court swing entirely to focus on grass.

"I just decided to tell my coach that this year, I'm going to skip French Open," she said. "And then we're going to train for the grass-court season, and focus on the grass."

As Sawangkaew hauled her way back into the match against Dodin, it was easy to see why. Her third match-point save was one of the most spectacular shots of the week -- a bold net-rush, and an angled volley winner at full stretch that left Dodin flailing.

Sawangkaew grinned when asked about it.

"I just think I have nothing to lose," she said. "I can only run to every ball until the last point. It's not over yet -- all I want is to run to every ball that I get."

From the brink of defeat, Sawangkaew managed to run away with the third set. And when she sealed match point, it wasn't just being pain-free that she enjoyed.

"This is real, real, real happiness," she said.

Unlike Sawangkaew, Montgomery knew that her long layoff -- nine months between Wimbledon 2025 and Bogota in April 2026 -- was coming. She'd previously struggled with a wrist issue in 2022, and it flared up again in January 2025. Surgery was unavoidable -- but doctors told her there was no rush, and the timing could be on her terms.

The American managed the pain through the first half of 2025, intending to play out her home Slam in August, but after Wimbledon realized that wouldn't be feasible.

Having been forewarned, Montgomery's frustration at being sidelined was alleviated. But her time away still provided her with some unexpected and important self-discovery -- and a rediscovery of the competitive fire she hadn't realized she'd lost.

Sawangkaew said the time away from tennis helped her rediscover parts of herself she hadn't fully appreciated while competing.

"I guess sometimes as tennis players, we think we know ourselves off the court and also we're very consumed by tennis," she said. "I learned that I can be a very different person off the court, but also the same person. There's more of a balance than I thought."

During her recovery, Sawangkaew said she rediscovered her competitive edge and worked to regain the confidence and body language she had as a junior.

"I reminded myself of who I was when I was younger and the body language I would have, the confidence that I would have in myself," she said. "I'd be like, 'No, this is my stuff.' Just getting that back was the precious moment in my recovery."

It hasn't taken long for that to translate to results on court.

In just her eighth tournament after returning from injury, Montgomery arrived in 's-Hertogenbosch ranked No. 484 and became the third-lowest ranked player (excluding unranked players) to win a WTA title in rankings history, capturing the title as a qualifier. The 21-year-old has since climbed to No. 194, and her three qualifying wins at Roehampton have extended her winning streak to nine matches.