THE Centre Court crowd has never exactly been noted for its multi-culturalism.
So who would have suspected it would discover a new darling in the flamboyant form of a new-age Jamaican-German Rastafarian who used to travel around the tennis tour in a VW campervan? That is Dustin Brown for you, though, and what this 30-year-old qualifier produced to prolong Rafael Nadal's misery at this venue was special indeed.
When all was said and done at SW19 last night, the scoreboard told that Brown, the World No 102, had overcome Rafael Nadal, now just a lowly World No 10, by a 7-5, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 scoreline. Perhaps we all shouldn't have been so shocked. Not only was this the fourth successive year in which the Spaniard had crashed to a player outside the world's top 100 players at this venue, but Brown had also been a comprehensive winner, 6-1, 6-4, on the players' only previous meeting, which came on the grass courts of Halle last year.
With Brown, though, every match is a tale of the unexpected. There is an instinctive, creative genius about this beanpole kid who was born in Germany but moved to Jamaica to begin his professional career, before resuming German citizenship in 2010. For most of this match, as Bob Marley might say, he was jammin', with all the wailing being done by Nadal.
A total of 58 winners flew past the Spaniard, an unholy combination of drop shots, aggressive returns, artistic volleys and passing shots. There is a wild, untamed quality to Brown's play which must have brought all manner of negative memories flooding back to Nadal about his dismissal from Wimbledon by Nick Kyrgios 12 months back.
"I am the way I am," said Brown, who doesn't even currently have a coach. "I've been like this all my life. Obviously it's great that people appreciate it. But if I worried too much about what people think, then I wouldn't have the hair and definitely wouldn't look the way I look."
In his moment of triumph, Brown lifted his T-shirt and slapped the tattoo which is inked upon his torso. It is an image of his father Leroy, who bought him said campervan to pursue his dream of becoming a top tennis player, but whom he no longer gets to see so often. It was a small tribute which spoke volumes about this player's long years in the wilderness.
"It's been a very long road for me and my whole family," he said. "Obviously all of that has made me to the person I am, tennis wise and also as a person and as a character. And I guess all that led to this day today, which is obviously a great day, probably the best day of my life so far."
It is Brown, and not Nadal, who lives on to face Viktor Troicki in the next round, and who knows possibly become a threat to Andy Murray's progress in this competition. It was one thing knowing that his game-style for grass courts meshed well with the Spaniard's, quite another too execute it like this. He even had the luxury of missing a couple of match points before one last return from the Spaniard struck the net and the match was his.
Brown, for one, said that now is no time to be writing obituaries for the 29-year-old Mallorcan's career. "This obviously is a surface that makes it easier to play my type of game that I want to play," he said. "But on that given day, you have to put it together, which I have done twice now. But that doesn't mean that I will play him next time and it will happen again, no matter if it's grass or any other surface. From the baseline he's one of the best guys out there."
While Roger Federer progressed 6-4, 6-2, 6-2 against Sam Querrey, playing one spectacular shot from between his legs, his old rival Nadal went off into the night, pensive about his future, but magnanimous towards an opponent who gave him no consistent tempo to feed off. "I didn't hit three balls in a row the same way," said the Spaniard. If there was a new kind of rhythm about Centre Court last night it must have been reggae.
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