Which Boca Resident Do You Want to Win Wimbledon?

With Roger Federer looming, Andy Roddick may be the only one of the three tennis players from Boca Raton who has a chance to win Wimbledon -- and a slight one at that. Mardy Fish has looked better than his 28 ranking. But the real Cinderella is 21-year-old Jesse Levine,...

By Thomas Francis

June 26, 2009

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With Roger Federer looming, Andy Roddick may be the only one of the three tennis players from Boca Raton who has a chance to win Wimbledon -- and a slight one at that. Mardy Fish has looked better than his 28 ranking. But the real Cinderella is 21-year-old Jesse Levine, who moved from Ottawa, Canada to Boca as a boy and entered the tournament ranked 133 in the world.

His defeat of former No. 1 Marat Safin is likely to be that former champ's last match at the All England Club -- an episode the mercurial Safin called a "relief" and that Levine called "surreal." So far this year, he's only tallied about $26,000 in prize money playing singles matches. He's liable to multiply that figure after this week's improbable run to the third round.

We could be witnessing the arrival of an American contender. "Levine's got talent" is one of the 10 lessons that ESPN drew from the tournament's action-packed fourth day.

Fish has a tough match today against fourth-ranked Novak Djokovic. For Fish, the next upset he'll need to engineer is against 19th ranked Stanislas Wawrinka, a Swiss player.

You can watch Wimbledon Live, plus archived matches, at NBC Sports. After the jump, video of Levine's biggest victory prior to beating Safin, a first round win at the U.S. Open.

US Open 2008 R1 - C.Guccione vs J.Levine - match point
by nicole-vaidisova

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