Liam Broady stuns Wimbledon 12th seed Diego Schwartzman

What will Liam Broady do with his £120,000 prizemoney for reaching the third round of Wimbledon? “I might just withdraw it all,” said Broady on Thursday night, “and just, like, lie on it.”

At 28, Broady has been searching for this sort of payday throughout a decade’s worth of professional tennis. He was an outstanding junior who made the final of the Wimbledon boys’ event, only to struggle with the transition to the main tour.

Despite his athleticism, and his compact left-handed game-style, Broady has never managed to climb higher than No116 in the world rankings. But on Thursday, by outlasting noted road-runner Diego Schwartzman over five brutally physical sets, he proved that he has finally arrived. Better late than never.

“Every player has to have a big win on a big court,” said Dave Sammel, Broady’s stalwart coach, and a man who has been at the heart of British tennis for three decades. “For Liam, this is his moment. I was pretty calm – then I thought it was gone when Schwartzman came back. But he found a way and that is what makes a top player. Everyone knows how long his journey has been.”

Played on Court 3, the match was the antithesis of the John Isner-Kevin Anderson ace-fest from 2018. With Broady standing 6ft tall and Schwartzman just 5ft 7in, this was a Lilliputian contest by the lofty standards of professional tennis. Between them, they served only 12 aces in 296 points, so there was a lot of running before Broady finally surged across the finish line by a 6-2, 4-6, 0-6, 7-6, 6-1 margin.

Afterwards, Broady sounded almost surprised by his own feat of endurance. To win a 3hr 47min slugfest against one of the acknowledged beasts of the tour was a striking achievement in itself, and even more so when you consider that Broady had needed 3hr 31min to beat Lukas Klein in another five-setter on Tuesday.

Such lung capacity can only be built over the long haul. Broady put in a big shift last year with Andy Murray’s former fitness trainer Jez Green, and has recently topped that up with another six weeks’ hard work alongside Kieron Vorster – the London-based South African who used to help Tim Henman with his strength and conditioning.

Broady is well-connected: a gregarious soul who is known and liked by everyone in British tennis. If anything, he has been too easy-going, too ready to go with the flow, which could be one reason why he has spent the last decade playing Challengers instead of these more lucrative events.

Murray often banters with Broady on social media, and is one of many who would love to see him crack the top 100 for the first time. Ironically, though, these two wins won’t help at all, because there are no rankings points at stake during this year’s Wimbledon.

“Yeah, I'll probably send him [Murray] a text,” said Broady. “Whenever I have a good win, I tend to text him and say, ‘Have you seen any results of note today?’

“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.”

In the spirit of their previous joshing on Twitter, might Broady consider pointing out that he has outlasted Murray at this year’s Wimbledon? “I'm not going to even go down that road,” Broady replied. “He'll probably just send me his tour wins across his career and stuff and then send me mine.

“I feel like sometimes people are a bit harsh on some of the British players,” Broady added. “I saw some of the things online about Emma [Raducanu] and Andy's results. But those guys both came out against in-form players and sadly didn't get the job done.

“I kind of wanted to get a little result for the British players myself to give us something to hold onto.”