London - The first thing that strikes you about Liam Broady, observed one tennis correspondent following the young Briton’s thrilling victory at Wimbledon on Monday, is his “lavish beard, that makes him look a good deal older than his 21 years”.
The correspondent might have added that it’s the kind of whiskery growth you might expect to find on a homeless person – which, astonishingly, is what Britain’s latest tennis hero is.
When he is not competing on the circuit in such far-flung places as Uzbekistan, Broady lives out of the back of his old Nissan Juke car, or sleeps on friends’ sofas.
His belongings are scattered between his car (“It’s a mess,” he confessed in a recent interview), a pal’s flat in Manchester and a fellow tennis pro’s home in Nottingham.
You might deduce, from all this, that Liam Broady is not a product of the so called “country club set”.
He didn’t go to public school. He comes from Stockport, not Surrey, and, until his battling performance on Court 18, picking up a cheque for £47 000 in the process, his career prize money since turning pro at the start of last year totalled £66 000 – barely enough to cover coaching and travelling costs.
All of this is true. But it is not why Liam Broady has been living out of a suitcase – though the reason was glaringly apparent this week at Wimbledon.
Broady, as anyone who watched him defeat experienced Australian Marinko Matosevic in more than three epic hours will probably be aware, is one half of the first British brother-and-sister duo to play at Wimbledon for 37 years.
Sibling Naomi, 25, watched some of the encounter with her family before going off to prepare for her own match. Sadly, she lost in straight sets, spoiling what would have been the perfect ending.
However, although members of Liam’s family, including his mother Shirley, were there to cheer him on, his father, Simon – the man who introduced him to tennis when he was four years old – was not.
Broady sr watched daughter Naomi, but not Liam – a fact picked up by the commentary team.
For the two have been estranged for the past three years after a dispute in which Liam appeared to offend family pride by accepting funding from tennis’s governing body, which had previously banned his sister Naomi.
Liam and Simon do not bad mouth each other, of course, but neither do they speak – not even when their paths inevitably cross on the circuit. (While Liam was talking about his stunning debut at the grand-slam event, his father was upstairs in the competitor area, checking on which court Naomi would play.)
One consequence of this schism is that Liam no longer stays at the family’s red brick end-of-terrace home in Greater Manchester, where his parents and siblings live. As well as Naomi, there’s Emma, 28, who works in a local bar, and Calum, 18, who’s a student.
Hence, Liam’s itinerant lifestyle.
The Broadys have never spoken publicly about the effect Liam’s “relationship” with his father has had on the once close-knit family unit, but he remains close to his mother and siblings.
On Monday, for example, Emma posted live updates from Court 18 including: “Hope everyone is supporting the Comeback Kid! Come On Broads!!!” and “Liam Broady – so, so proud of you!! Love you SO much.”
Liam also shared a room with Naomi during a recent tournament in Paris.
But behind the jubilant scenes, common sense suggests that the reality of the situation – father and son in purdah – cannot have been easy for any of the Broady children, and especially their mother.
Shirley and Simon, a property landlord who once worked in the music industry, have been together for 30-odd years but have never married. Shirley is listed on the electoral role under her maiden name, Shirley Weatherley.
“Everybody loves the family,” said a neighbour.
So what is the background to this spectacular sporting schism? The story begins with a cutting from a red-top tabloid in 2007 bearing the headline, “Two future tennis stars banned for wild antics”.
One of the tennis stars in question was Naomi. At the time, she was the British under-18 champion but was stripped of her Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) funding over a series of indiscreet (at least in the eyes of the LTA) internet postings on the social networking site Bebo.
They included a photograph of her wearing silver shoes, skimpy shorts and top, with her leg draped over a condom vending machine. On the site, Naomi also described one of her pet hates as “hangovers after a good nite owt”. She said she liked smoking and had broken the law.
As a result, Naomi Broady was branded the “bad girl” of British tennis and stripped of LTA funding.
Apart from anything else, she became the butt of crude jokes in the press (“Why do condoms mean you can’t win a rubber”, was the title of one so-called opinion piece). One respected tennis coach called her a mug. “I have total sympathy with the LTA over this,” he raged.
But, as Naomi would later point out, she was only 17 at the time.
“I don’t know why it was such a big deal,” she said. “I was trying to live, for a few nights at least, as a normal 17-year-old. It was blown out of all proportion… Now I’m tarnished with this bad-girl reputation.”
Such was the resulting enmity between Simon Broady and Roger Draper, the much-criticised and highly-paid LTA chief executive, that he decided to pay not only for his daughter’s tennis coaching, but also his son’s.
To do so, he sold the family home and downsized to a more modest property in the same street.
When, a year later, the LTA offered to restore the funding, Broady sr said no to the tens of thousands of pounds on offer.
Explaining his decision, Broady sr said: “The LTA wanted us to fall in line, and we won’t. They have made life so awkward for us that I had no alternative but to cut ties with them.
“I speak to a lot of people in this area who don’t even know Liam plays tennis, and when I tell them our situation their answer is always the same – that our face and accent don’t fit.”
Many tennis observers shared Simon Broady’s view. The LTA, to quote one commentator, “wanted kids from the right end of town”.
Shortly afterwards, though, Liam did accept the LTA shilling. This is not a criticism of Liam: it’s just what happened.
His decision to return to the LTA fold appalled his father, who saw it as a betrayal of everything he stood for.
Father and son have not spoken since. And there was little sign of them resolving their differences this week. Liam did not even receive a text from his father to congratulate him. Asked during his post-match interviews if there was any prospect of the family being reunited, he replied: “I doubt it, but we will see.”
Daily Mail