Liam Broady was proud to give the tight-knit British playing group something to shout about after he stunned 12th seed Diego Schwartzman in five sets at Wimbledon – but did admit he will probably still tease Andy Murray.
The world number 132 lost 11 games in a row during his second-round tie and looked on course to be the latest home player to exit the Championships after Murray and 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.
“I think 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 number five 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!
“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 kind of 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: “That would be, I think, my highest jump in points score.
“I’m losing 45 points from last year, so I think I’ll probably drop back now to 150!
“But I’m just grateful to have made the third round of Wimbledon, to be honest. I’d play Wimbledon for no points and no prize money.”
After he beat Lukas Klein in a five-setter in round one, Broady has now spent seven hours and 17 minutes on court.
He looked down and out in the fourth set but started to force Schwartzman into more errors and gained revenge on the world number 15, who won in four sets when the pair met at the same stage in 2021, to secure a career-best result.
“Diego’s one of the fittest guys on tour, to have managed to get him in five sets, really happy with it,” Broady said.
