By Mark Hodgkinson

British qualifier Marcus Willis captured the imagination of the British public - and tennis fans around the world - as he won seven matches before falling to Roger Federer on Centre Court on Wednesday. His journey through pre-qualifying, qualifying and the first round of the main draw - and his happy-go-lucky approach to his Wimbledon adventure - has put him among a group of underdogs who defied ranking gaps to produce some of their best tennis on the biggest of stages. They came, they saw, they conquered...

Vladimir Voltchkov

Here was a run through the draw - starting in the qualifying competition and ending in the semi-finals - that had been inspired by Maximus Decimus Meridius. That's Russell Crowe's character in Gladiator.
 
At the 2000 Championships, the Belarussian became the first qualifier since John McEnroe in 1977 to go that deep into the main draw. The credits rolled for Voltchkov after Pete Sampras put a fork in him.

Alexandra Stevenson

Playing with the insouciance of youth - and also with three pairs of socks, as she had borrowed a pair of men's shoes for the qualifying competition - the 18-year-old American came through the preliminary rounds in 1999.
 
And Stevenson, who was just out of high school, kept that run going in the main draw, all the way to the semi-finals.
 
Her approach was simple - she thought of her higher-ranked opponents as you might ducks in a shooting gallery: "You wind up your ducks and you take them out, you shoot them. It's fun to do." The duck shoot went no further than the last four, with the teenager brought down by countrywoman Lindsay Davenport, but it had been a fun ride. 

Dustin Brown

"Nothing is impossible," McEnroe observed after Brown, a German of Jamaican descent, beat Rafael Nadal in the second round of last summer's tournament.
If you think serve-and-volleyers are hard to come by in the modern game, you won't find another serve-and-volleying Rastafarian with a tongue piercing, dreadlocks, a tattoo of his father on his rib-cage and a weakness for hitting drop-shots when returning serve.

Jelena Dokic

Has there even been a more discombobulating hour on Centre Court? Inside 60 minutes, a teenage member of the sport's underclass - a 16-year-old qualifier ranked outside the world's top 100 - flipped the sport on its head, and then spun it around a few times.

It wasn't just that Dokic defeated Martina Hingis, the top seed, in the opening round of the 1999 Championships, but that she did so for the loss of only two games. In mitigation, this was Hingis' first match at a Grand Slam without her mother in attendance, with the player saying afterwards: "We decided to have a little bit of distance." Sadly, Dokic has subsequently become known for her own troubled relationship with a parent, in her case her father Damir.

Jelena Jankovic and Jamie Murray

In the summer of 2007, Jankovic promised Jamie Murray kisses if he hit good shots, and that seemed to inspire and motivate the Briton. They would win that year's mixed doubles title. 

Lukas Rosol

For all the interest in Rosol's body art after he defeated Nadal in the second round of the 2012 Championships - he has a tattoo of a serpent on his shoulder and a Maori scene inked on his leg - it's his mental approach that still fascinates. Under the closed roof of Centre Court, he entered a trance-like state, whaling away with his forehand without pausing for even a moment's self-doubt.

There haven't been many occasions during Nadal's years on the tour when he has suffered from forehand-envy. But the encounter with the world No. 100 was one of them. In the space of five sets, Rosol went from being a virtual unknown to the man who had welted his way past Nadal and into the sport's consciousness. At the time, this looked like the greatest upset in the history of the Championships. It has since been downgraded a little as it became apparent that Nadal was suffering from pain his knees. But Rosol has retained his cult status.

Jonny Marray

Marray's run to the 2012 doubles title, in a wild-card partnership with Denmark's Frederik Nielsen, still raises smiles around this green and purple corner of south-west London. So Marray won a Wimbledon title a year before his near-namesake Andy Murray. Marray's victory made him the first Briton to win the Wimbledon men's doubles title for 76 years. 

Goran Ivanisevic

The Teletubbies, superstition and the goodwill of the British tennis public carried the Croatian wild card to the most improbable of triumphs in 2001. Every morning, he would watch the children's television programme and every evening he would order the same three-course dinner at the same restaurant (even sitting at the same table), and in between he would play the grass-court tennis of his life. After defeating Tim Henman in a rain-interrupted semi-final, he went on to beat Australia's Pat Rafter on what was known as 'People's Monday' on Centre Court. 

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