Broady helps add to British interest on marathon stage

The 17-year-old from Stockport ground out a 7-6 (7/4) 4-6 13-11 victory on a packed Court 18 to follow in the footsteps of Oli Golding.

After edging a tight first set on the tie-break, Broady dropped his serve at the start of the second and that was enough for big-serving Kern to take it and level the match.

Broady, with Tom Farquharson, won the boys’ doubles last year and his victory in the prestigious warm-up event at Roehampton last week boosted hopes he could do well here.

He looked on his way to victory against Kern when he served at 5-3 in the decider but missed a match point before Kern secured the break back.

The pressure was firmly on the 17-year-old German, who was serving second, and Broady brought up match points Nos 2 and 3 at 9-8 but Kern fired down two big serves.

Kern wobbled for the first time serving at 12-11 down, though, with two double faults bringing up a fourth chance for Broady, which he took when Kern placed a forehand long.

In the last four Broady will play former junior world No 1 Jason Kubler from Australia, who knocked out Golding in the second round having lost to him 12 months ago.

The match, which lasted two hours and 41 minutes, was played on the same court as last year’s marathon between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut, and Broady added: “At one point I was actually thinking that.

“I got broken at 5-3 when I was serving for the match. He played quite well. After that, I kind of forgot the score and tried to focus on each game individually.

“He probably raised his level a bit. Obviously with his serve, it’s always going to be hard to break him in one of those sets. At the end I think he just played one or two sloppy points and I managed to close it out.”

It was not Broady’s first lengthy third set at Wimbledon this year, having beaten Alessio Di Mauro 12-10 in the first round of Wimbledon qualifying, and he felt that experience had certainly helped him.

Broady and sister Naomi are coached by father Simon outside the Lawn Tennis Association’s system, but he insists there is no extra motivation in proving a point.

LTA chief executive Roger Draper, speaking on the day Nigel Sears resigned as head of women’s tennis to coach former world No 1 Ana Ivanovic, revealed the bad blood between the organisation and Simon Broady is something he regrets.

He said: “I don’t like the situation at the moment with Simon, because I don’t think it’s that positive for the sport. It’s always difficult but there’s always parents like that around who disagree with your coaching strategy.”

Sears, who spent four-and-a-half years in his post, said: “It’s been a real privilege to be in charge of women’s tennis at the LTA, and an honour to captain Great Britain’s Fed Cup team.”

During Sears’s time in the role five British women broke into the world’s top 100, and two made the top 50.