[Tim Henman announced today that he is retiring from tennis after the U.S. Open and the upcoming UK vs Croatia Davis Cup tie. Here is a Henman retrospective. This also will be your New Haven Crisis Center Post, and the place to talk about the upcoming U.S. Open for the day. - Pete]
Old-school tennis fans will be in mourning today as Tim Henman
announced his retirement. Where are we going to to see such attractive
backhand volleys from now on? Where are we going to go for annual
reminder that the real world is a rough and tumble place that probably
will throw a bucket of ice water on your most tender dreams, now that
Tim Henman won't play another Wimbledon? What is the British press
corps going to do now that 50 per cent of its raison d'etre (the
other 50 being Andy Murray) and ticket to world travel has decided that
he won't be punching the clock in Melbourne, Dubai, Rome or Shanghai
anymore?
It's a sad day. Henman, the epitome of the decent British suburban
lad - an identity that once led some dipstick to ridicule him as "human
beige", like decency was an uncool thing - will call it quits in tennis
after the U.S. Open and the UK's upcoming Davis Cup tie vs Croatia
(bear in mind that this is a qualifying match for the World Group, not
the main DC semifinal.
Henman held a presser this morning out here at the BJKNTC,
announcing his decision. The bottom line: He realized when he came to
the U.S. to prepare for the hard-court swing that his nagging back
injury made proper training and fitness impossible. He had known for a
while that his career clock was ticking, and the alarm
reminding him that he must retire one day finally went off. "It was an
uphill battle, trying to get ready, and it was getting harder and
harder to fulfill. I realized I wanted to stop."
You couldn't ask for someone more squarely out of the traditional
tennis demographic than Timothy Henry Henman, which helps explain why
throughout his career Henman embraced the the code that mandated good
sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct. His great grandmother Ellen Stawell Brown was the first lady to serve overhand at Wimbledon (1901), and he came from what the British might call "a perfectly lovely Oxfordshire family". While some fans and pundits
found him boring, his fellow players - that is, people
who actually know Henman - did not. He was very well-like in the
lockerroom, and notorious for his acid tongue and biting wit. You know how
it goes: what you see is not always what you get, and some people -
like Henman - don't feel obliged let the entire world know how they
feel about everything, all of the time.
British, anyone?
Henman's best year was 2004, and it shocked his countrymen as well
as the tennis press and camp followers; after all, in 2003 he survived
the third round at only one major (Wimbledon, where he made the
quarters) and his world ranking slumped to No. 15. But he finished No.
6 in 2004, partly because he made two Grand Slam semifinals and one
quarter (Wimbledon). Henman reached the final of of four Masters Series
events, winning one: Paris. And while that conquest on indoor carpet is
the best result of his career, the more inspiring and riveting feat was
his run to the semfinals of Roland Garros (2004) on the red clay that is so
puzzling to attacking players. It was, in many ways, Henman's finest
moment: a demonstration of what a precise, smooth, purposeful,
attacking game can achieve on even the slowest surface (he lost to
clay-court helion-of-the-day Guillermo Coria).
But as Henman is British and Britain is a colony of Wimbledon, he
will be remembered most fondly for the way he performed in his own
national championships. He carried the expectations of a Wimbledon-mad nation that has
struggled for over half-a-century to produce a male player capable the event like a regular Sisyphus. Legions of fans gathered to watch - and get their hearts broken - the giant screen showing Centre Court on a hillock that was eventually named "Henman Hill." It was the Woodstock district of otherwise
staid and buttoned up Wimbledon, and every danged time Henman played it
was their version of Jimmy Hendrix playing the national anthem.
It never happened for Henman at Wimbledon, partly because of Pete
Sampras. Sampras was Tim's friend and a like-minded traditionalist,
both in the way he played and the way he carried himself. Sampras
ultimately donated his own coach, Paul Annacone, to the Henman cause.
But Sampras was heartless and callous to British hopes and delusions
when he met Henman on Wimbledon's lawns: Sampras shattered the dream on
three different occasions - twice in the semifinals. "I did everything
a little better than Tim," Sampras told me not long ago. "It was a
tough match up for him. If you take me out of the Wimbledon equation,
though, he might have won there, maybe even more than once. He
responded to the pressure there incredibly well. It's hard to play your
best tennis where and when there's the most at stake,
expectations-wise. But he stepped up and answered the call, pretty much
every time."
Henman missed one huge opportunity at Wimbledon. He was beaten in
the semifinals of 2001 (6-3 in the fifth) by Goran Ivanisevic. Although
Goran would go on to win the event in one of the most memorable - and improbable - of all
Wimbledon moments, the other finalist that year was Pat Rafter. Neither
man played with the command and confidence of Sampras; it was Henman's
best, as well as last-best, shot.
Of course, Henman's decision today rules out a final go at
Wimbledon, which is a pity. It would have been nice to see him go out
there knowing he had one last shot at capturing the Grail, or even just
to smell the roses. But Henman said: "Sure I asked myself if I want to
go back to play one last time, but the simple answer was 'No.' I
always felt at any tournament I entered that I could win, and I don't
feel that now - what's the sense of hanging aorund for nine months just
to be able to play Wimbledon one more time? That didn't appeal to me."
Summing up his career, Henman said he was most proud of two things:
his record at Wimbledon (he made the semifinals and quarterfinals four
times each) and his level of professionalism. I had to admire the guy,
and also feel a twinge of sympathy for him, when he put it like this: "I played some of my best tennis when it most counted, at
Wimbledon.I was as good as I could have been."
I hope I can say that when I quit, at anything.
PS - Word is the Neil Harman of The Times (London) has been taken off suicide watch.
