Watching the Queen's club tennis I witnessed the emergance of one of Britian's finest young talents of recent years. Oliver Golding who had been given a wildcard for the event. He has recently played well in the boys tournaments and went out of the French Open to the eventual winner which is in no way shameful.

At Queen's the task facing Golding was the experienced Frenchman Nicolas Mahut, who made a name for himself at last year's Wimbledon in the 5th set epic with John Isner that he eventually lost 70-68. He was also a runner up at Queens in 2007 losing out to Andy Roddick but beating none other than Rafael Nadal on his way, so Golding was aware along with the rest of Centre Court that this would be a tough test.

Golding started well pressuring Mahut's serve right from the off managing to force Mahut to 0-30, however the Frenchman fought back and manage to hold, Golding then had a interesting service game of his own as he went up 40-0 only to be pegged back to deuce by a couple of double faults and a bit of inexperience, he did manage to come through the game and continued to impress with his range of shots. However in game six Mahut's experience showed through as he broke the young Brit, the rest of the set went with serve as Mahut took it 6-3. The second set also saw one break of serve with Mahut prevailing 6-4 to take the match, it was a good performance by Golding as he did threaten to break on a few occasions and definitely has a bright future ahead.

The emergance of Golding is encouraging for British tennis which has in recent years had to heavily rely on Andy Murray for any form of success. The fact that Britain's number 2, James Ward is currently ranked 216th in the world tells its own sad story of how British tennis has declined. Only a few years ago Britain had 3 players to support in the men's draw Tim Henman, Greg Rusedski and the up and coming Andy Murray. Now Murray stands alone in Grand Slam events as Britain's representative. If Golding continues his early promise we may soon witness a very capable British number 2 and he may eventually over take Murray and become a very succesful player.