Neal Skupski and Stockport’s Naomi Broady flirted their way to another victory at Wimbledon yesterday.
Skupski and Broady knocked out the ninth seeds David Marrero and Arantxa Parra-Santonja to secure their progress to the mixed doubles third round 2-6, 6-3, 6-4 in a match held across two days due to bad weather.
And they are loving every minute of their new partnership at SW19.
“I got in touch with Naomi, I did all the chasing but I was her second choice because she originally wanted to play with someone else, I keep reminding her of that,” said Skupski.
“We’re having great fun but it’s still competitive and we still want to win. Some guys just play mixed doubles for a bit of extra money but this is Wimbledon and we are taking it deadly seriously.
“Marrero is a top doubles player and we were a bit intimidated by him at the start but we were just better in the end.
“In some ways the rain delays helped us settle our nerves and gave us time to focus on things that weren’t quite happening.”
Broady made headlines last week after reaching the second round of the women’s singles, finally exiting to former world number one Caroline Wozniacki.
But she claims mixed doubles is even more fun that her debut on No.1 court.
“We’ve both got really big serves and if we keep serving as well as we have then there is no reason why we can’t go much further,” she said.
“I’m really enjoying mixed doubles and it’s great to be still involved and still get the opportunity to play out there. We’re having too much of a laugh to stop yet.”
Broady’s earlier success guaranteed a big crowd for the match on Court 16 , although Skupski claimed most of the attention was for his striking 6 ft 2 in partner.
“I keep getting tweets about how lucky I am for playing with such a stud – don’t let him pretend he’s not getting any attention,” she joked.
“We are so grateful for the All England Club for giving us this wildcard and we’ve done so well to reach this so far already. If we keep playing well then I think we can go a bit further yet.”
As the Official Banking Partner of The Championships, HSBC is helping fans get closer to Wimbledon by giving them the chance to win a coaching clinic with Tim Henman. For further information, visit www.wimbledon.com/hsbc
Main image courtesy of BBC via YouTube, with thanks.
