Diary: Sports royalty occupy Centre Court

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  • Wimbledon guests: England rugby's Stuart Lancaster & Matt Dawson.

    On the first Saturday of the Championships the Royal Box on Centre Court is traditionally packed with British athletes, who get invited to catch the third round action of the day.

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    Yesterday, a host or rugby union stars were in attendance including Brian O’Driscoll, the most-capped player in rugby union history, who was joined by Bill Beaumont, Matt Dawson, Chris Robshaw and Stuart Lancaster.

    Among the many sports stars who were there are Nicola Adams, the first-ever female Olympic and Commonwealth boxing champion, distance runner and mother-of-two, Jo Pavey, who struck gold in the 10k at the European Championships last summer, six-time Paralympic champion David Weir, squash ex-world No1 Nick Matthew and Ryder Cup heroes Luke Donald and Justin Rose.

    Martina Navratilova and Boris Becker were amongst the tennis legends in the Box while Judy Murray, Andy Murray’s mother was there with her Strictly Come Dancing partner Anton du Beke.

    Elsewhere on the grounds, ex-Dortmund coach Jurgen Klopp was spotted courtside for Dustin Brown’s match. Brown revealed a friend of his had asked him to get tickets for Klopp, a fellow German, and the player obliged without knowing Klopp personally or knowing much about football to begin with.

    Klopp was appreciative enough to go to Court 3 and watch Brown lose to Viktori Troicki in the third round.

    “I gave him tickets. Not from me, but a friend of mine asked me if I could put the tickets down. 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.  I was like ‘okay, maybe that's the person I left the tickets for’,” revealed Brown after his match yesterday.

    “It's great. It's an honour. I don't know a lot about soccer, so I'm not going to get into that. It was an honour for him to be there and watch the match. Also saw that he was sitting in the box area.”

    Funny that it seems Brown wasn’t sure who Klopp even was.

    Another interesting revelation from Brown was the fact that he was hopping straight on a plane to Germany so he could take part in some club matches in Cologne. One day he is beating Rafael Nadal on Centre Court to make the Wimbledon third round and the next he is playing club matches back home. You’ve got to respect the hustle!

    A reporter tried to get too personal with Brown yesterday and asked him if he had any debt to pay off. Brown made £77,000 for making the third round at Wimbledon, which is a considerable sum for someone ranked outside the top 100 and it will inevitably help alleviate some of the expenses he has as a professional player. But that doesn’t mean we have a right to ask him how much debt he has.

    Naturally Brown was not amused by the question.

    “I don't see what that has to do with this,” responded the German. 

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