ON THE fourth day of Wimbledon 2005, in a ceremony invisible to the naked eye, a torch was passed from tremulous English hands to a Scottish pair that are strong and secure. Within two hours, across a couple of hundred yards of prime tennis green, Tim Henman lost, Andy Murray won, Wimbledon spun on its axis and, as the bottom dropped out of one world, another whirled into a new orbit.
Tim Henman’s five-set loss to Dmitry Tursunov, coupled with Murray’s 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 victory over Radek Stepanek, the No 14 seed, meant that for the first time in a decade, the British No 1 was not the last man from these islands still standing. Now, from a home perspective, the event is Murray’s: no holds barred, a single spotlight.
That he can live with it there is no doubt, for this is a boy born to achieve even if these are the courts that, fairly or unfairly, have made and broken the British down the years. Murray is not for breaking. He has won two matches in straight sets in his first championship and if he falls tomorrow in the third round, when he meets David Nalbandian, the 2002 finalist, there will not be a shred of shame.
He treated Stepanek — coached by Tony Pickard, the former Great Britain Davis Cup captain, who must have wished he was 20 years younger and available on a full-time basis for Murray to give him a call — with a disdain that was remarkable. “He tried to put me off and make me nervous, but he ended up looking stupid,” Murray said of his opponent from the Czech Republic. “I knew Tim had lost, I wanted to keep the British going because they (the media) would have hassled me if I’d lost.”
No we wouldn’t. Murray’s performance was one of wonderful control, of himself and his racket. He returned Stepanek’s serve brilliantly, he sliced and diced from the back of the court, he moved well, he did not let a net cord against him on match point unnerve him, he rallied better, served better and obdurately refused to be shaken from his iron resolve.
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Compare and contrast with Henman. Wimbledon’s referee is retiring, the chief executive is retiring, so as the worst things come in threes, we should retire the notion that, after all the years of trial and hurt, he can become the champion in his early thirties. The game has moved on and Centre Court was given a demonstration yesterday of how it has left the British No 1 behind.
Yes, he is a wonderful player who has been in the top ten for more years than anyone still wielding a racket bar Andre Agassi; yes, he is the best we have had in these islands for decades; yes, he has been so, so close to reaching a Wimbledon final. But to lose 3-6, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3, 8-6 in the second round to Tursunov, a Russian with a bad back, a couple of days after he should have lost in the first to Jarkko Nieminen, a Finn on his honeymoon, brings with it a single, sad conclusion. Henman ‘s chance on grass has gone.
He has said that he has only played one decent game on the surface in four years and in the space of three days he has played two extremely indifferent ones. “I will keep trying because you know what, I love what I do,” Henman said. “I’m still pretty good at it as well.” True enough, but we live in a world where pretty good does not quite cut the mustard.
Yet in the first ten minutes yesterday, defeat looked unlikely as Henman, aware that he had begun poorly against Nieminen, came out in a blaze of aggression. Tursunov was troubled on every service game and the first set was over in 44 minutes. Henman had two chances to lead 2-0 in the second set, could not take them and, when he was broken in the third game, had three opportunities to nip the Russian’s renaissance in the bud. But Tursunov steadied, took the set and battle was joined.
A flurry of service breaks midway through the third set went Henman’s way, but he dropped serve in the fourth game of the fourth and though he had two chances to break back, Tursunov produced successive aces of penetration and placement to stand firm.
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Serving for the match for the second time, the Russian struck a second-service winner, drew a netted forehand return and another from Henman’s backhand return. A forehand pushed into the net by Tursunov gave the crowd a glimmer of hope, but it was dashed by Tursunov’s seventeenth ace.
He neither raised his fists nor fell to his knees at the moment of victory, aware perhaps of the deathly hush that had descended around him.
“When you break down the nuts and bolts of the match, it came down to 17 break points that went begging,” Henman said. “On 15 of those I couldn’t get the ball back in play. You know why? The guy was hitting aces or hitting the lines. I sit here feeling numb, but what can I do about that?” Learn to love grass again. After Rafael Nadal, the French Open champion, lost to Gilles Muller yesterday, he said he was going to have a grass court built at his club in Majorca “because my goal until the end of my career is to win this title”.