No regrets from beaten Brown
Dustin Brown’s Wimbledon success story may be over but the German insists his shock second-round victory over Rafael Nadal will stay with him for life after he was beaten in four sets by Viktor Troicki today.
Brown was unable to reach the heights of his stunning win on Centre Court and joined Nadal’s previous low-ranked conquerors – Lukas Rosol, Steve Darcis and Nick Kyrgios – in failing to go through another round at SW19 after beating the Spaniard.
The 30-year-old qualifier produced a number of outrageous winners to enthral the crowd on Court Three but he was too inconsistent and it was Troicki who progressed with a 6-4 7-6 (7/3) 4-6 6-3 victory.
“I’m happy with my tournament,” Brown said.
“When I came to qualies, if someone would have said ’sign here for beating Rafa, making second round and qualifying’, I would have signed that paper.”
Brown added: “It’s a lot of new experiences. It’s been great.
“Obviously having the pleasure and being able to play on Centre Court and then to play a match like that – it doesn’t make a difference if I lost today or not.
“No one will ever be able to take that I way from me.”
There were the blistering forehands from Brown, chiselled volleys and, of course, swinging dreadlocks, but there were also too many unforced errors from the world number 102 and Troicki was more adept than Nadal at exploiting gaps around the net.
The highlight of the match came in the first set as the German played a drop-shot winner off Troicki’s serve, which was so heavily laced with back-spin it came back and bounced on his own side of the court.
“He hit a good kick serve. I wanted to hit a drop-shot,” Brown said.
“I hit a drop-shot and it came back over. Everyone smiled, which is a good thing.”
Brown used to save money by travelling to tournaments in a camper van and stringing rivals’ rackets, and while those days now appear long gone, he suggested his £77,000 consolation for losing in the Wimbledon third round will not go far.
“It’s great to make money in a tournament like this,” Brown said.
“But then sometimes people that look at that don’t look at the bunch of weeks where we play a Challenger event where in the first round in Italy, for example, you get 300 euros minus 30 per cent tax.
“And you can check what a flight costs from Frankfurt to Italy.
“It’s one great week. Obviously a lot of money. But there’s also so many weeks where we throw money out the window basically, just for flights and food.”
Brown’s defeat was watched by former Borussia Dortmund manager Jurgen Klopp, who was supporting his compatriot from the players’ box.
“I gave him tickets – not from me, but a friend of mine asked me if I could put the tickets down,” Brown said.
“I wrote the name down on the paper, but I didn’t think about it, then when I went on the court, I saw him and was like, ’Okay, maybe that’s the person I left the tickets for’.
“It’s great. It was an honour for him to be there and watch the match.”
Troicki, who was handed a year-long suspension after missing a drugs test in 2013, is one win away from a potential reunion with Andy Murray, to whom he lost in the semi-finals at Queen’s two weeks ago.
