Dustin Brown hopes to make Jamaica's loss Britain's gain

Dustin Brown is the most exciting and controversial tennis player to emerge from the Caribbean in a long time, a distinction in a restricted category, perhaps – but interest is heightened somewhat when he says he wants to play in the Davis Cup for Britain. The first West Indian since Richard Russell 42 years ago to play at Wimbledon, the 25-year-old Brown has roared up the ATP rankings over the past year and turned a few Pimms-happy heads in Buckinghamshire ealier this week when he beat the world No 9 Fernando Verdasco in three sets in the Boodles Challenge at Stoke Park, losing in the final to Gaël Monfils yesterday. He has drawn the 16th seed, the Austrian Jürgen Melzer, in the first round at Wimbledon.

Whether the 6ft 5in, rocket-serving Brown, ranked 105 in the world and not long ago at No99, can realise his long-shot plan to play for a country he hardly knows rests on his ability to establish the existence of an English grandmother, and he also needs a UK passport and two years' continuous residency. But he hopes his rising form will persuade the Lawn Tennis Association and the Great Britain Davis Cup captain Leon Smith he is at least worth talking to.

"We have had no contact with him yet," an LTA spokesman said. "But, if he satisfies the International Tennis Federation regulations, we will be happy to do so."

Brown says: "I looked into what criteria applies. I have been told last week at Queen's that I might be able to play. Definitely I would be interested. The British connection is on my father's side of the family; it's my grandmother – although I'm not that sure where she was from. We're still checking into it. But it's a real possibility. If it turns out to be a positive situation then I definitely will look more into it. I haven't had any contact with Leon Smith yet but I'm going to be in Wimbledon so I'm pretty sure when I get there I am going to be in contact with those people sooner or later."

On the evidence of his ranking (55 places ahead of Great Britain's No2, Alex Bogdanovic) and his vibrant game, Brown would be a catch for Smith, who has been deprived of Andy Murray's services, at least for the tie against Turkey in July, as well as the reluctant Bogdanovic.

John Lloyd, the previous captain, became aware of Brown and his desire to play for Britain but he had never seen him play and dismissed the notion – although it is known he was tempted. If he were to qualify, Brown would have to wait six months before he could play.

What Brown brings is a ready-made fairytale: a handsome, dreadlocked rebel with a booming serve (his first serve percentage for the year stood at one point at a remarkable 87%) and a curious slice on a viciously whipped forehand, weapons that were too much for Verdasco and seriously inconvenienced Denis Istomin at Queen's Club.

He is the son of a Jamaican father and German mother who bought him a camper van to slog around the backblocks of the lower-level European circuit for four years. At times his journey was so grim he survived on complimentary sandwiches at obscure tournaments, on all continents. He played everywhere and anywhere, from Chennai to Johannesburg. Brown struggled in anonymity, just another battling pro. Except he kept going.

"I was born in Germany in 1984," he says. "Lived there until 1986. Then I moved back to Jamaica. I went to school there and started playing junior tournaments there. I also played Davis Cup for Jamaica. In 2004, I moved back to Europe, and that's when my parents got me the camper van, so I started playing tournaments here.

"At the beginning it certainly was not very easy, but that was my last option to keep going with tennis. It took me a while to get used to it. But, after all, it got me to where I am, so I am very thankful to be given that opportunity by my parents.

"Money was pretty tight most of the time. I was playing Futures, on the road all over Europe, and making $170 to lose in the first-round match is not exactly a good amount of money. But with the camper, it was possible, it [enabled] me, if I lost in the first round, to have enough money to play the next tournament. That pretty much saved my career.

"It was a pretty big camper, actually, with three beds and a kitchen. So I could save quite a bit of money, cooking for myself. I adjusted to it very well. Yes, I was by myself at the beginning quite a lot, but you get used to it. Then there were my friends at the tournaments, who I'd hang around with, and often I'd have a companion travelling with me in the camper. It was a bit of an adventure."

That is the happy bit. The downside to the Brown fairytale is how he was forced to abandon the country of his father's birth because, he says, the tennis establishment there refused to fund him. He accused them of favouritism and felt the full brunt of their disgust.

After his first major breakthrough, winning the Soweto Open in April last year, he complained: "I am the No1 [tennis player] in my country, probably the best player Jamaica ever had, but I have no support from the tennis federation in my country, which is kind of sad. Also, people in Jamaica basically don't know how I am doing. I actually called my dad, who is in Jamaica, and told him that I won today, because it's not going to be printed there in the newspapers."

It is as much a shame for Jamaica as for Brown that he and the tennis big shots there could not resolve their differences. Jamaican tennis has had few heroes down the years. You have to go back to the Sixties, when Richard Russell and Lance Lumsden were taking on and beating the American doubles greats Charlie Pasarell and Arthur Ashe, to identify a really buoyant period in Jamaican tennis. Lumsden, a calypso singer, once wrote in a song not wholly complimentary about Wimbledon: "I'd rather fight in Vietnam, than have to play at Roehampton."

Dougie Burke – with whom Brown has been in heavy dispute in his role as national director – followed those pioneers. And it is a wonder he does not empathise with Brown: he travelled widely too, winning junior tournaments in Belgium and Italy, then moving to Canada, where he was ranked eighth in 1981.

If Britain is to be the beneficiary of Brown's spat with Tennis Jamaica, the pragmatists at the LTA will probably be more grateful than shamefaced that they could not find their own talent from the streets. "I'm so looking forward to Wimbledon," he says. "This is a dream come true. The last year has been really good. I'm just looking forward to keeping it going like this."

For now, for Brown, the sun is shining, and the weather is sweet. He is ready to come to the rescue.