In the end this was a match too far for Liam Broady, who found in David Goffin not just an opponent of greater craft and precision, but a player perfectly geared to cancel out his own flickering strengths.
Broady has had an overwrought, if in his own words “uplifting” three days at Wimbledon. A first-round defeat of Marinko Matosevic was accompanied by as much coverage of his difficult family circumstances as the wonderful show of spirit that allowed him to recover from two sets down. Here, though, it was all about the hard facts of grand slam life as on a baking Court 13, menaced throughout by the kind of heat that hits you like a blast of hot air from an open oven, Broady was beaten 7-6, 6-1, 6-1 by an opponent who had too much depth and accuracy.
Roared on by a fond if slightly woozy home crowd, the British No6 was made to scrap for every point as Goffin’s more calculated rhythms from the back of the court were met by Broady’s own slightly hit-and-miss whipped forehand and occasional rushes to the net.
Broady is a hugely engaging 21-year-old, powerfully built and bracingly physical in his constant hustle from the back of the court. He will hopefully learn from defeat here by a player of similar size and style whose game clicked into a higher gear almost from the opening exchanges.
As the first set moved towards a tie-break Goffin seemed to be already steeling himself, waiting for the British player to make mistakes and moving through his own service games with an ominous severity. At 4-5 Broady saved a first set point and wheeled out that lusty fist-pump to the approval of a home crowd who stayed with him throughout.
The tie-break, though, was a calculated massacre. Goffin found a clean backhand winner on Broady’s first service point and moved to 5-1 before Broady netted a backhand to concede the set. And that was was pretty much that for a player who was always going to have to run like mad just to stand still. In Goffin he simply found a more refined back-court hustler, the Belgian thrumming up through the gears to take the second set before easing the match out in the third.
Broady left the court to warm cheers for a sterling effort from a young, likable British player. The challenge, as ever, is to push on from one or two encouraging glimpses here, to work on those 33 unforced errors – to Goffin’s 19 – and to refine his own most potent weapons.
Stockport’s finest summer sport export will take away £47,000 in prize money forplaying two games, almost three-quarters of his career prize fund to date. For a man who has been living out of the boot of his Nissan Juke and laying his hat in budget hotels around the world, this is an achievement. Perhaps it may even end up a moment of career ignition for a muscular, raw player whose personal circumstances have been unusually unsettled.
The estrangement from his father is well-documented. The family cut itself off from the Lawn Tennis Association when funding was withdrawn from Naomi Broady over some rather run-of-the-mill social media pictures that showed a 17-year-old doing what 17-year-olds tend to do on a night out. Liam’s acceptance of LTA funding three years ago led to the schism with his father, who had sold the family home to fund his children’s tennis.
At the bottom of which unhappy story lies the basic stuffiness of British tennis’s governing body; specifically its humourless, heavy-handed even rather spiteful treatment of a 17-year-old girl from outside the usual mannered, self-selecting talent pool. It is here, as much as in Broady senior’s own stubbornness, that the seeds of a fractured family tale lie. Who knows, an apology from the LTA over the initial “shaming” incident, plus a general reaching out to the family, may make all the difference. Either way the LTA must take some responsibility for a depressing chain of events given a happier shade this week by Broady’s first-round success against the head.
