Three days after the biggest win of his career, Dustin Brown, dreadlocks and all, will be back in action on Sunday, strutting his stuff once more. The only shame is that it will not be at Wimbledon after his time in the sun was ended by Viktor Troicki in four sets, succeeding where Rafael Nadal had failed.
Having lifted his ranking to around the 80 mark as a result of reaching round three, Brown will get direct entry into next month’s US Open and has a golden chance to head towards the top 50 by the end of the year. But he will be turning out for his club in Cologne. You get the feeling he would not have it any other way.
It was always going to be hard for Brown to back up his win over Nadal with another against the No 22 seed Troicki, whose serve is far stronger than the Spaniard’s and who has soared back up the rankings in the past 12 months.
Just as Lukas Rosol, Steve Darcis and Nick Kyrgios, the men who beat Nadal here in the past three years, Brown came up short next time out, beaten 6-4, 7-6, 4-6, 6-3 by the Serb, who was too solid for a man who had lit up Centre Court with his heroics on Thursday evening. Troicki will play Vasek Pospisil in the last 16 on Monday.
A cheque for £77,000, three-quarters as much as his total prize money in singles for 2015 before Wimbledon, will come in handy, allowing him to fund his travels in a more relaxed way than when he was skipping around Europe in a camper van between 2004 and 2007. He will head to Newport for the last grass-court event of the season, starting a week on Monday, but it is typical of Brown that he should be ready to turn out for his club.
“The plan from the beginning was that if I’m not in the tournament, I will be there for the team and play tomorrow,” Brown said. “What state I’ll be in tomorrow is a different situation. If the team decides, OK, Dustin, you should take a break, we don’t think you should play [that’s fine]. On the other side, it’s only two sets and a champions tiebreaker, which is a lot easier than playing best of five out here.”
Almost inevitably, despite an encouraging crowd on No3 Court, Brown was never quite able to reach the heights he had done in sending Nadal scurrying home to Mallorca for some extra fishing and golf. There were still plenty of highlights, including some great volleys – athletic and deft – a few running passes and one almost ridiculous drop shot return which spun back over the net to his own side.
“Well, he hit a good kick-serve,” the 30-year-old Brown said. “I wanted to hit a drop shot. I hit a drop shot and it came back over. Everyone smiled, which is a good thing.”
Outplayed in the first two sets, Brown broke serve almost out of nowhere to win the third but Troicki recovered to reach the fourth round for the second time in his career, 12 months after returning to the tour having served a one-year ban for refusing to take a blood-doping test on the assigned day. Unlike Nadal, Troicki has a big serve that can get him out of trouble and he out-aced the German 24 to 16, never allowing him to dominate.
Brown said he had enjoyed the whole experience, but that the time for celebrating was a few months away yet. “One thing has happened and it is great,” he said. “When I’m in Jamaica at the end of the year, then I can have a Red Stripe and say: ‘Great. Great year, Dustin, you played great.’
“There’s no time for that right now.”
