Murray stands firm in face of Brown trickery
Scot drops seven games as he sees off American I just didn’t make many mistakes, says champion
Dustin Brown has carved a niche as Wimbledon’s biennial circus act. Always looking like he has arrived for the Notting Hill Carnival six weeks early, he elicits astonished yelps from a Wimbledon audience smitten by the novelty of a Rastafarian in whites. In 2013, his playing style, most politely described as unorthodox, pushed Lleyton Hewitt a step closer to retirement. Two years later, he dispatched Rafael Nadal amid a hail of twinkle-toed trick shots. This time, though, he found that his scatter-gun bombardment put barely a scratch on the slab of Scottish granite that was Andy Murray.
The devil-may-care Brown had his moments, as usual, with one leaping backhand drive-volley proving a particular highlight. But Murray was too cussed, too blinkered, too disciplined to be derailed by any exhibition-match excesses. In a shade over 1½ hours, he com- mitted a mere five unforced errors and allowed his gangly opponent just 14 points on his serve in waltzing to a 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 victory. So much for the player whose sore hip had called for Uri Geller’s powers to heal.
“If he has a problem with his hip, I don’t want to play against him when his hip’s good,” Brown said, still smarting from the Centre Court schooling he had received. With Nadal, his relentless advances to the net had reaped handsome reward. Against a man with the quicksilver reflexes of Murray, he was reduced to a blur of dreadlocks, making hit-and-hope swipes.
“Most of the guys you play, you can try to find a way where you know you can hurt them,” he explained. “But here I had the feeling that it made no difference what I did. If I stayed back, if I attacked, if I came in, if I chipped, he pretty much had an answer for everything. There was never a stage when I could relax and say, ‘Have a breather here’. It was just constant pressure.”
When he speaks German, Brown sounds, as befitting one born in Halle, pitch-perfect Westphalian. In English, it is as if he is voicing a Malibu advert. That lilting Caribbean cadence is a reflection of an adolescence spent in Montego Bay, after his Jamaican father had relocated the family there. Such an exotic upbringing has also made for an intriguing mixture in his character. Off the court, he can exude an agitated Teutonic intensity. On it, he plays the kind of beach tennis that is as invigorating as a tropical breeze.
It is to Murray’s great credit that he swept past this unfamiliar roadblock with a minimum of fuss. Brown ruffled him early, with an array of exquisite lobs and dropshots, but Murray more than had his measure by the time a doublefault gave up the first break. With a running backhand pass to seal a 3-2 lead in the second set, he reeled off 11 of the next 13 games to hare into the third round. For a figure once criticised for his temperamental weakness, Murray has evolved into a model of reliability when it matters most. Not for nine years has he allowed himself to slip to defeat prior to this stage of a slam.
When it was put to Murray that this should count among the most satisfying results of his season, he stonewalled. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I just didn’t make many mistakes.” He is acutely conscious that far more onerous tests awaits if he is to emulate Fred Perry – yes, that old yardstick again – as a threetime Wimbledon champion.
Tomorrow he confronts Fabio Fognini, an uncompromising baseliner against whom he has often struggled on clay. But Brown said: “Andy hasn’t had as much time on grass as normal, but the deeper he goes, the tougher it will be to beat him. It’s only going to get better.”
‘It didn’t matter what I did – he had an answer’
Even in post-match guise, Brown had tailored his look for the occasion, with diamond-white headphones and his hair bunched up into a white Rasta hat. For another 12 months, he faces a return to the relative obscurity of the Challenger circuit. But one can be sure that he will be tempted by the prospect of scattering more Wimbledon magic. It is on grass, after all, where he comes alive, where he has won six of his eight matches at this level. For Murray, likewise, a love of the lawns is already flooding back.