Liam Broady gets job done at Wimbledon but holds off teasing Andy Murray
The world No 132 lost 11 games in a row during his second-round tie and looked on course to be the latest home player to exit after Murray and Emma Raducanu’s shock defeats on Wednesday.
At 3-0 down in the fourth, Broady dug deep and edged a tie-breaker before he showed superb levels of endurance to outlast Schwartzman in the decider and triumph 6-2 4-6 0-6 7-6 (6) 6-1 in three hours and 47 minutes.
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Hide Ad“It kind of played on my mind a little bit yesterday,” the 28-year-old explained. “I saw some of the things online about Emma and Andy’s results.
“At the end of the day tennis is a lottery. That’s why people watch it. It’s never a guarantee as to who’s going to win. Those guys both came out against in-form players and sadly didn’t get the job done. But I kind of wanted to get a little result for the British players myself to give us something to hold on to.”
On Murray, who regularly pokes fun at Broady on social media, the British No 5 added: “Yeah, I’ll probably send him a text. I was thinking about sending him a text a few minutes ago, to be honest.
“Whenever I have a good win, I tend to text him and say ‘have you seen any results of note today?’ But, yeah, he had a tough one yesterday so it might not be appropriate to send that one!
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Hide Ad“Andy has always been probably one of my toughest critics, but he’s also been one of the greatest advisers that I’ve had. It’s easy for people to say, ‘you have to believe in yourself more, you’re a great player’, but when one of the greatest players of all time says that to you, it carries a lot more weight and does strike home a lot harder.”
Victory for Broady sent him through to the third round at a major for the first time, having previously lost on two occasions in round two at Wimbledon.
In a normal year he would have earned 90 ranking points so far and would be on the verge of breaking into the top-100, but after Wimbledon decided to ban Russian and Belarussian players due to the invasion of Ukraine, the ATP stripped points from this tournament.
Broady laughed off any frustration, adding: “I’m just grateful to have made the third round, to be honest. I’d play Wimbledon for no points and no prize money.”
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