FOR Tim Henman, it is time to put on a happy face. Whatever outrageous fortune may be inflicted on the British No 1 in the next two weeks, the message from Paul Annacone, in his corner for the first time at Wimbledon, will be to relish the experience and make certain that he drags every last bit of pleasure from it.
That may be asking a lot. Henman and the other 255 players in the singles draws are faced with the prospect of three days skipping between showers because the warm weather that has graced these islands for the past month is scheduled to break up with an unsaintly timing. “Let not your hearts be troubled,” Henman said confidently in a reading at a memorial service for John Parsons, former Tennis Correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, yesterday.
“Believe in God; believe also in me.”
The majority of the British public have kept the faith and have been rewarded with four semi-finals in the past six years. They want more, but so does the man himself. His surge to the semi-finals of the French Open this month is bound to heap a deal more external stress on him, for it has shown a side of the man and his game not seen before. It is no more than he will have to place on himself.
Henman opens tomorrow against Rubén Ramírez Hidalgo, from Alicante in Spain, who has not played at these championships before. It is about as good as it could get. Annacone was Pete Sampras’s coach for four of his seven Wimbledon successes; no one can offer a deeper insight into what is required to help a player to touch his peak when it really matters. “I hope it would help Tim a lot me having been with Pete,” Annacone said yesterday. “With all the stuff he went through, I understand physically and mentally what happens; the pressures, the different things that can occur as you try to execute your game plan. Pete is a great reference point for that.
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“One thing I remember most about Pete was that I never knew anyone who truly enjoyed the big moment more. He felt that he was going to shine and though most people say they love the big occasion, there are very few who would get physically excited about it. Before the 1999 final against Andre (Agassi), he was about to walk out and he turned and said, ‘This is going to be fun.’ That epitomised his belief that to achieve his goals and play his best, he had to be enjoying it. The reason Pete stopped playing was that, although he was still picking up the trophies, he had ceased to love it as much as he did.”
This is going to be Annacone’s initial first-hand occasion at dealing with the demands from public and media that build into a gargantuan force at this time of year. The Roland Garros experience was but a dry run. The coach was making mental notes. “There’s a lot of expectation here, I know that,” Annacone said. “Pete had this ability to keep himself insulated from what was going on around him and that is not as easy for Tim because he’s a more gregarious person. I need to be there to make sure it’s not overwhelming. Pete set his boundaries and nothing was allowed to distract him from doing the job properly. It worked for him. But Tim is loving this and there’s time for him to get better.”
The positive vibes that flow from Annacone — even when he has to analyse the defeats that have speckled the eight-month period he has been working with Henman — have to stimulate his pupil. Henman has talked excitedly of it all coming together for these two weeks and the setback in the Stella Artois Championships at Queen’s Club, West London, ten days ago was, in the coach’s words, too small to matter.
“Honestly, we never got time to decompress from Paris,” he said. “And if you are a traditional grass-court player, you don’t need a long time on the grass. We got so many good things out of the French Open and that loss (to Karol Beck) gave Tim time to unwind before putting in some excellent work on the practice court. What he has to do now is know his game plan and back himself to be able to execute it when the time is right.”
It is something Henman’s three British colleagues will be hoping to do themselves today. Jamie Delgado, a former schoolmate of Henman, has had to work the hardest to get to this stage, winning a five-set final round of qualifying to earn a match against Filippo Volandri, of Italy. Richard Bloomfield, who finished third in the Lawn Tennis Association’s wild-card play-off, will take on Feliciano López , the No 18 seed from Spain, who has reached the fourth round in the past two years.
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And Alex Bogdanovic, the 20-year-old left-hander, plays a certain Roger Federer on Centre Court. He will need all the luck in the world.