AFTER his heroics on Day One, when he beat Marinko Matosevic from two sets down, hopes were high that Liam Broady would pull off an even bigger win in the second round, where he faced David Goffin, the No 16 seed.
Given the endurance the British player showed in that first match, those hopes were still there, albeit diminished in stature, when he lost the first set to the Belgian on the tiebreak. But from there on in the match belonged to Goffin, who put in a consistently relentless performance to take the next two sets in comfort and go through to the last 32 with a 7-6, 6-1, 6-1 victory.
Had Broady won, he would have been the first British wild card to reach the third round since Andy Murray got there on his debut in 2005, when he defeated George Bastl and Radek Stepanek before losing to the former finalist David Nalbandian. Yet no matter the disappointment of being unable to emulate the No 3 seed, Broady was justifiably pleased by the fight he had put into both matches.
"I've absolutely loved it," the 21-year-old from Stockport said. "It's been fantastic. I felt at home, again, on court against David.
"That first set, I felt fantastic. We were pretty even. He was a bit nervous maybe. I was a bit nervous.
"But off the ground it was gruelling as well. I have to get used to that, because the very best guys play with incredible intensity."
Although he cannot claim to be among "the very best guys", Broady, too, demonstrated that he can play with a fair degree of intensity. He proved that not only to the partisan crowd on Court No 3, but also - and more importantly in the long run - to himself.
Indeed, after a spell in which he had to spend time kipping down on friends' sofas and was not at all sure if he had a future on the tour, Broady is convinced that he is now making sustained progress. "Someone asked me how it felt after beating Matosevic," he continued. "I said I've got direction again.
"As everyone knows, the tour is a bit of a slug and a grind. It's tough to see the end. That's the fantastic thing about slams: light at the end of the tunnel four times a year. To know that I can compete with these best guys and still have so much to improve on and be reasonably tight with Goffin, it's immensely uplifting.
"I think I said before I played Marinko, and I said it after I played Marinko, I play well on the big stage. And again today, before the match got away from me, I played well."
The ideal, of course, is to play so well that the match does not get away from you, and Broady knows he is nowhere close to that ideal - not, at least, when he is facing an opponent as gifted as Goffin. But the journey towards that ideal is along way, and over the past few days Broady has made some significant progress along it.
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