Stockport’s Liam Broady has taken heart from his first-round defeat to 2013 Wimbledon champion Andy Murray – saying he one day hopes to emulate the Scot and fellow Mancunian Fred Perry.
World number 235 Broady went down 6-2 6-3 6-4 to second-ranked Murray in just over 90 minutes on Tuesday – the first time the latter has faced a fellow Brit in 56 career Wimbledon matches.
Murray became the first Brit since Perry in 1936 to win the year’s third grand slam three years ago and after his first taste of Wimbledon’s famous Centre Court Broady is hungry for more.
“It’s hard when you watch on TV. You think that the top players in the world are superhuman. They are such good tennis players,” said Broady, whose career-high ranking is 158.
“They’re so good at what they do that you forget they’re just men in a sense. Obviously they’re spectacular at tennis, but they are just men.
“That’s one of the things I’m going to take away. There are hundreds of guys across the world that hit the ball pretty similar, it’s just what you do with it at what times.
“I don’t feel like I was completely outplayed today. I don’t feel like I was completely overawed. I felt like I was playing against another man.
“Again, that’s one of the things I will take away from that. It’s not that far away. But I need to start doing stuff at the challengers to get my ranking up high enough to be here regularly.
“At the moment with where my ranking is, that’s where my tennis belongs, in a sense. I’ve got to start realising that I want to belong at this level. I feel like I do belong.”
Murray, 29, went from a potential pretender early in his career to champion three years ago and although Broady is not going to place any bets on a Wimbledon crown he has the bit between his teeth to achieve much more.
“I’d love to go as far as he (Perry) did. I know quite a bit of Fred Perry’s history. Obviously being from Stockport. I used to drive past his house quite a bit, where he used to live, on the way to practice and stuff.
“To win something like this would be a dream that hopefully one day can come true. I’m not going to put all my money on it, but I’d like to go some of the way to that.”
Image courtesy of Wimbledon via YouTube, with thanks.
