IT IS like trying to find someone who can aim as straight and true as Jonny Wilkinson: who will replace Tim Henman in Great Britain’s Davis Cup team? And, like England’s rugby union XV, is there not the sense of applying a sticking plaster when a tourniquet is required?
While Henman attempts to pick his way through a formidable ATP field in Rotterdam this week — one down, four to go — his retirement from a competition that never quite treated him as well as he would have wished has emphasised the state of men’s tennis in this country. Jeremy Bates, the captain, has almost certainly decided on his team to face Israel the week after next, but the fact that he is waiting until the last minute to name it suggests a level of apprehension that is hardly surprising.
Bates knows that whoever stands up alongside Greg Rusedski in Tel Aviv will need to distinguish themselves in a manner previously hidden from view. There is not a player in the country besides Rusedski who has won a live Davis Cup rubber — indeed, few have seriously challenged the duopoly that Henman and Rusedski have enjoyed since 1995.
Even these two could not successfully join forces to win a World Group tie — something Britain have not achieved since 1986, when Bates led the way against Spain. The task ahead is stark, with Britain poised for a tie in difficult surroundings that, if they should win, offers a chance to qualify for another shot at a place among the elite 16 nations. Defeat is hardly worth consideration, not least for a governing body that has earmarked £40 million for a national tennis centre in the nebulous belief that its construction represents the sport’s panacea.
Advertisement
As far as today’s rankings are concerned, Alex Bogdanovic is first in line at No 169, followed by Arvind Parmar at No 185. There are five more players ranked inside the top 300. In the doubles, Henman is still Britain’s highest-ranked player at No 109, followed by Jonny Marray at No 173 and Dan Kiernan at No 230. Andrew Murray, the 17-year-old Scot, is No 419 in the singles and No 1,769 in doubles, and yet there is a school of thought that he may be selected in the doubles team, possibly with Marray or David Sherwood, ranked No 264 in doubles.
Statistics can mean everything and nothing. What matters is finding someone not fazed by the challenge of winning a five-set match. No prospective candidate has managed that feat outside these shores, be it in the Davis Cup or a grand-slam tournament. Bogdanovic came close in the US Open first round last year against Alex Calatrava, of Spain, before losing 6-4 in the final set; Parmar lost in five sets to Younes El Aynaoui in the opening round of the Australian Open in 2000. A great divide needs to be crossed.
Parmar is the most experienced of the prospective singles challengers, yet he has had two excruciating losses, to Giovanni Lapentti, of Ecuador, at Wimbledon five years ago, and Gilles Muller, of Luxembourg, in Bates’s first match as captain last April. “The Davis Cup has been unfortunate for me,” Parmar said yesterday. “I felt I deserved to win both matches but the better player came through.
“I’d love the opportunity to be put into that situation again — Jeremy knows . . . what he would get from me. It is clear this has been in our minds ever since we heard that Tim had retired.”
He and Bogdanovic are playing an ATP challenger event in Besançon, France, where, coincidentally, the two Israel singles players, Noam Okun and Harel Levy, are also participating. James Trotman, accompanying the Britain group, is acting as coach and spy rolled into one. “The players are aware that this is a chance to get into the side and possibly stay there for a while,” Trotman said. “Alex is extremely talented, he has his own ideas, his training style is different, but he’s learning what it takes to win at this level and how you need to be in great mental and physical shape all the time.”
Advertisement
Bogdanovic has come through a handful of matches this year, against Jan Vacek and Lukas Dlouhy, of the Czech Republic, and Alex Waske, of Germany, when he might have lost. They augur well. But do they augur well enough? That is Bates’s choice. It is not an enviable one.