“Hey, nice match, man.” Richard Williams walked across the concourse and shook Richard Brooks’s hand – an alliance of coaches after a marvellous match. Williams we know well, the giant, stooping, cigarillo-in-mouth father of Venus Williams. Of Brooks, little is appreciated, a former Middlesex player who has been steering the career of Jelena Jankovic for the past seven months.

He is half English – his father, David, is from Ruislip – and half Spanish, he had worked at the academy in Benidorm where Ricardo Sanchez, who oversees Jankovic’s career, is based when he is not travelling with Colombia’s top players. When Sanchez needed someone to tour full-time with Jankovic, the Serb, he turned to Brooks. The 25-year-old, who reached a career-high ranking of No 1,036 in May 2003, did not need asking twice.

The results have been astonishing. Jankovic has risen from outside the top ten on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour at the start of the year to No 4 with titles in Rome, Charleston and Auckland, recording victories over Amélie Mauresmo, Martina Hingis (twice), Svetlana Kuznetsova and yesterday a poised and compelling 6-4, 4-6, 6-1 win against Williams to reach the fourth round.

Brooks led the support team for Jankovic, which included Manuel Santana, the former French Open, US Open and Wimbledon champion, who is a close friend of the Jankovics. At the end of the match they all stood and – Santana apart – drew their arms horizontally across their throats in a gesture whose meaning they are keeping to themselves.

When he was a young player in Britain, Brooks accepts that he used to let his temper get the better of him – “a character” is a popular description from his contemporaries. “Yes, I had problems, I was explosive but it was just the way I was, the federation never really understood my attitude to the game, it wasn’t a good connection,” Brooks said. “Both Jelena and I work the same way, it is hard but we have fun. I believe she will be the No 1 player in the world, otherwise I would not want to work with her.”

Bit by emphatic bit, it is a position that is becoming attainable for the 22-year-old who reached the semi-finals of the US Open last year, before losing to Justine Henin, a match that has every chance of being replicated on Thursday. Jankovic enjoyed her postmatch meal yesterday surrounded by her coterie and with Rafael Nadal as company. “We are the loud ones,” she said. “You see so many other players so quiet in the corner and then there are us, the clowns.”