Fernanda Contreras Gomez had never played on grass until this month but grew up listening to stories from her grandfather, Pancho Contreras, about his playing days at Wimbledon, where he reached the semi-finals in mixed doubles in 1958.

The 24-year-old Mexican, who advanced to the Qualifying second round on Tuesday with a 6-4, 7-6(3) victory over Tena Lukas, made her Grand Slam debut at Roland-Garros last month, where she qualified and won her opening match before falling to Daria Kasatkina.

She competed on grass for the first time a week later, on the lawns of Surbiton, and wants to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps into the Wimbledon main draw.

“I grew up on those stories,” world No.153 Contreras Gomez told wimbledon.com.

“When we went at Christmas to visit my grandfather, we always heard about his time at Wimbledon. He would always tell us cool things and how everybody did and the strawberries and cream and the green cut grass and smelling it in the morning... it just gave me a little bit of, you know, wanting to be there.”

A successful Qualifying campaign at Roehampton this week would make Contreras Gomez just the third Mexican woman in the Open era – after Elena Subirats (1968) and Angelica Gavaldon (1990, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996) – to contest the main draw at Wimbledon.

“It's just a great honour to be able to bring my country forward and bleed the red, white and green of Mexico, as we say back home,” she says.

“It's just fills me with emotion and passion. It's amazing.” 

‘Emotion’ and ‘passion’ are two words you can certainly associate with Contreras Gomez. It didn’t take long before fans at Roland-Garros rallied around the Mexican, with her exuberant energy, flashy one-handed backhand and colourful outfits.

Having played college tennis at Vanderbilt University, Contreras Gomez is comfortable competing in front of a rowdy crowd, and she said the atmosphere created by the Mexican fans in Paris made it feel like a soccer match, not tennis.

While she has had to swap her colourful kits for the traditional all-whites in Roehampton, she is bringing the same kind of enthusiasm she showcased on Parisian clay.

In her Qualifying opener, she took the first set in 40 minutes and broke at the start of the second before falling behind 2-5 against her Croatian opponent.

Contreras Gomez was mistiming some of her net approaches, which Lukas capitalised on immediately. Instead of surrendering the set though, the Mexican struck back to level for 5-5 and she regained control in the tie-break to close out victory in one hour and 33 minutes. 

Keeping note of everything

“I just kept telling myself to stay in the moment, to fight every point and that it's OK, a tennis match is meant to be long and if it has to go three sets, that's fine,” she said.

Contreras Gomez doesn’t like to look too far ahead. During changeovers, she sits down jotting down thoughts in a notebook to help her stay focused.

“I started using it for tennis because, let's say that day your opponent has a specific shot that's really working, you can note it down so you can remember it later,” she explained.

“And then you can note down little things that you see; for example today, the sky was beautiful, it was clear. The smell of the grass was actually... like you could smell it and it was kind of cool. Smelling a hard court is nothing like smelling Wimbledon.

“So I remember I wrote that down too. I just wrote down the senses so I could totally be present in the moment. And I wrote like, ‘Just believe, work hard, have fun, enjoy it and choose joy’.” 

That’s not the only writing she has done. At the height of the pandemic in 2020, when the tennis tour shut down for five months, the Mexican penned a novel, which she hopes to get published soon.

She describes herself as “an art fanatic and a nerd” and the idea for her book came to her when visiting a museum. Part of the novel is actually set in the British Museum and while she initially started writing it for fun, she was encouraged by her family to get it published.

“It's kind of like a Dan Brown type of vibe. Like a Ken Follett novel. So it's a little bit about mythology and fiction, but tied with current events,” she said.

“It was really fun to write it and it was just kind of a de-stressor during the pandemic. And then I actually finished it in February this year.”

Next up for Contreras Gomez in Roehampton is fellow college tennis standout Jamie Loeb.

More and more college tennis players have been making waves on the professional circuit, including Danielle Collins and Jennifer Brady, who featured in the last two Australian Open finals.

Contreras Gomez has the added bonus of seeing her college doubles partner Astra Sharma perform so well on the WTA tour, lifting titles in singles and doubles and cracking the top 100.

Sharma won her Qualifying opener on Tuesday just a few minutes after Contreras Gomez wrapped up her victory and the pair sat side by side to conduct their post-match interviews. 

“She's so supportive and she can let you know what to expect and how things will look, so you don't get to the tournaments and you're completely flabbergasted or you're completely shocked. She’s been a great role model,” she said of Sharma.

While Contreras Gomez’s entire professional experience on grass consists of four matches, she does seem to have the tools to do well on the surface. She hits a mean slice with her one-handed backhand – which she inherited from her father and grandfather – and is brave enough to approach the net and use her feel when the opportunity presents itself.

“Three days after Roland-Garros I went from clay to start on grass, and I remember being like, ‘What's happening?’ You can't slide, you just have to stay low and moving your quads,” she said, reflecting on her grass court debut a couple of weeks ago.

“So it was really interesting but I actually started liking it. I really enjoy it. It's cool that if you fall, like today I fell, I tripped, but nothing hurts. I didn't get a cut. Had I fallen like that on the clay or hard I would have for sure started bleeding, and here it’s like, ‘Oh it’s OK, I'm falling on this nice little grass’. So that’s nice.”