AND THEN THERE WERE TWO...
Tension is just too much for Broady but he shows signs of becoming a late bloomer
THERE was an unusual kind of torture for Liam Broady last night as he contemplated whether taking a few more rackets on to court might have made the difference.
He had arrived with only three, each tensioned precisely the same, and after two sets of struggle against Alex de Minaur, the athletic Australian who hits with metronomic accuracy, sent one off to be tightened.
By the time it came back, he was a break down in the third set and had been badgering chair umpire Fergus Murphy to find out where the re-strung racket had got to.
‘The first couple of sets I felt like the ball was flying off my strings a bit,’ said Broady. ‘I brought the new one out and I just felt a lot more comfortable playing. I felt like the ball was doing what I was trying to tell it to do. I’m going to maybe try and get a couple more rackets in the bag for the next few tournaments. I know that some of the guys like [Bjorn] Borg used to have like 20 in their bag, back in the day.’
It’s hard to conclude that a re-strung racket would have anything more than a psychological effect. De Minaur comprehensively outclassed Broady, who was also affected by Court No1’s odd wind patterns, barely breaking sweat, bouncing on the baseline like a featherweight boxer during a performance which suggested his world ranking (37) and his seeding (19) understate his class.
But Broady’s search for a different tension, something Jimmy Connors frequently tried mid-game, reflected a refusal to yield that has characterised his Wimbledon and had Court No1 rising to applaud him by the end. It was equally evident in his compelling five-set second-round win over Argentine 12th seed Diego Schwartzman, which transcended any other British accomplishment here in the past six days, though it has passed slightly under the radar.
There was more of the same indefatigability when that racket came back. Broady broke De Minaur for the first time as he served for victory and was at break point seven times more, as the Australian tried to serve out a second time. Unblinking, De Minaur dug those points out.
In many ways this was a metaphor for a career in which Broady, the world No132, has become accustomed to unfavourable odds. He said after drawing Andy Murray here a few years back, that winning would be comparable to “Stockport County winning the Premier League in one season from the Vanarama North”.
Greg Rusedski, who knows him well, has witnessed a change in the 28-year-old’s lifestyle, saying: ‘He used to go out a little bit too much, go out for meals and do things socially. But he decided to make tennis 100 per cent.’
Broady had dropped to 331 in the world shortly before making that change, in 2019. Victories over the Polish world No10 Hubert Hurkacz at last summer’s Olympics, as well as Schwartzman, the world No15, have flowed. The £120,000 that reaching the third round here will make would not change the world for some players. It will for him. At the end of a week in which Heather Watson has reached the fourth round of a Grand Slam at the 43rd time of asking and at 30 years of age, Broady is evidence that achievement in this sport is not just defined by winning a Grand Slam.
‘Tennis is a different sport in the sense that it’s always one v one, so it’s kind of in your head,’ he said. ‘It’s always a 50/50 shot. I think my tennis is there now.’
He could have badly used the cherished ranking points which the ATP has removed from this Wimbledon because of the ban on Russian players. He actually loses the 45 he gained here last year. ‘I’m not sure if it was the right solution in the end,’ he said.
For a day or two, the racket and the third set here may haunt him. ‘It felt like the classic Jimmy Connors type of thing: “I didn’t lose the match; I ran out of time”,’ he said. ‘That’s kind of what I felt like a bit today.’
But a player whose charisma and personality British tennis sorely needs just might just be on a late blooming journey. ‘I’m going to retire when my body gives out, not when I make a certain ranking or a certain amount of money,’ he said. ‘I’ll play as long as I can play because I truly believe that my best years are going to come later.
‘Hopefully they come next year and then last 10 years. In this sport we never know, do we? It’s just the way it works. You get some outliers. Maybe I’ll be an outlier.’