British cancer survivor Ryan Peniston beats French Open finalist Casper Ruud in fairytale upset

The giantkilling stories keep coming at Queen’s Club as 26-year-old Ryan Peniston – a cancer survivor from Southend – took out the top seed and recent French Open finalist Casper Ruud in straight sets. 

Peniston is the British No 7 and the world No 180, a man who has spent the last five years schlepping around low-level Futures and Challenger events in unlikely spots such as Greece and Kazakhstan. If Jack Draper’s victory over world No 14 Taylor Fritz on day one caused a stir, Peniston’s success was just as remarkable. 

He was a last-minute inclusion here, who would have had to go through qualifying if Andy Murray’s deep run in Stuttgart last week had not reshaped the draw at the last minute. Suddenly the Lawn Tennis Association had a wild card available for this most deserving of prospects.

Peniston has thus taken a roundabout route to the grand stage: Centre Court at Queen’s, in front of the BBC’s cameras and a packed Victorian pavilion. In the circumstances, his sang-froid was remarkable.

He admitted in his on-court interview that he hadn’t slept much on Monday night, as he prepared for his debut on the ATP Tour. But when it came to the second-set tie-break – a moment when it would have been all too easy to falter – he controlled the ball beautifully with his sophisticated left-handed game.

Peniston is not a power player. He stands 6ft tall but looks willowy by comparison with some of the bodybuilder physiques you see on the tour. Physically, he was a late developer – a skilful racket-wielder who only caught up with his classmates at around the age of 16. The explanation lay in his childhood affliction – a rare cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma – which necessitated regular hospital visits through his early years.

“I was