BRIT OF BOTHER
End of the road for Broady and Boulter
LIAM BROADY could not ratchet up the tension on Court No.1 quickly enough – and that meant he paid the price.
The Stockport left-hander failed to reach the Fourth Round after losing to tricky Aussie Alex De Minaur – and afterwards suggested he was hampered by his racquets.
Broady gave a good account of himself but only increased the pressure on the 19th seed during a tight third set before falling to a 6-3 6-4 7-5 defeat.
The 28-year-old explained afterwards that it was only after he sent a racquet to be re-tensioned that he felt at ease.
He said: “In the first couple of sets I felt like the ball was flying off my strings a bit.
“I was bugging the umpire because I sent a racquet off to get it tightened. It only came back once I was one break down in the third.
“I brought it out and just felt a lot more comfortable. The ball was doing what I was telling it to do – but the change was probably too late.
“I know that back in the day Bjorn Borg used to have 20 racquets in his bag.
“I only had three – although they were strung properly at the tension I played at on other days. But sometimes it just doesn’t feel right.
Improvement
“I would have liked to have seen what would have happened if I’d had a tighter
racquet.
“At the end, I felt like it was the old Jimmy Connors saying: ‘I didn’t
lose, I just ran out of time’.”
Broady said he felt there was still improvement in his game – saying this week will have given him confidence to improve his ranking.
He added: “I think my tennis is there. I don’t think you can beat Hubert Hurkacz at the Olympics as I did last summer without being able to play.”
Katie Boulter also crashed out and admitted the emotions of a tough few weeks finally caught up with her against Harmony Tan.
The 25-year-old learned shortly after her first-round victory over Karolina Pliskova that her grandmother, Jill, had passed away.
And she acknowledged the toll that had taken on her, as well as a tough build-up to the Championships, after her 6-1 6-1 defeat.
Boulter said: “I may have seen it coming a little bit – I started to reach my emotional and physical point where I was struggling a little bit in the warm-up.
“I’m just a little bit emotionally drained.”