Tennis: French Open: Henman Put Out to Grass Again

Tim Henman may yet replicate last year's double run into the final weeks of both Wimbledon and the US Open but the transient nature of success in the latter stages of a player's career was underlined at Roland Garros yesterday when he lost 7-5, 6-7, 6-3, 6-4 against Peru's Luis Horna in the second round.

Just over a year ago Henman, who will be 31 in September, delighted both himself and those lovers of his atypical clay-court tactics by reaching the last four here. And he achieved it on a surface that was originally totally alien to him but on which he was determined to achieve success, much as a European might teach himself Chinese to order a meal in Beijing.

Henman stumbled and stuttered over an eight-year period and then suddenly began conversing in sentences that encouraged some to believe he was not a tourist but almost a native speaker - a clay-court natural.

John McEnroe edged a little closer to the truth when he remarked this month that, while Henman's run to the semi-finals last year, where he lost to Argentina's Guillermo Coria, was totally admirable, he also had good fortune with the draw.

This was not said grudgingly but simply made the point that Henman took full advantage of what was placed in front of him. Yesterday he played no worse than in the early rounds last year; in fact he was often rather better. But time moves on. As everybody knows, he has a degenerative back problem and there were more grimaces during the third set yesterday, when his game fell away sharply.

"It was just a little bit of general stiffness," said Henman. "I'd like to think, touch wood, that's it's not going to be a problem."

But it cannot help but be. Henman is not, and never has been, a huge hitter, so he relies on his mobility, allied to his multiple skills at the net.

Once that mobility falls away, by whatever fraction, he is bound to suffer and there were occasions against Horna when Henman showed his age. He did not do a lot wrong but the 24-year-old Horna was simply substantially quicker and hit the ball harder.

Horna has not had a good year, failing to achieve a single win from January through to April and arriving at Roland Garros with a meagre total of five tour victories. Combine that with the statistic that prior to this year he had won only two matches at Roland Garros, albeit one of them against Roger Federer, and superficially Henman did not appear to have a huge amount to worry about.

But he knew differently, having read the auguries, and was proved not to be wrong. "I will have to be at my best," he had warned. Horna hurried and scurried with the purposeful intent of a ferret in a rabbit warren. "I certainly give him a lot of credit for the way he played," said Henman. "I really feel I could have played a bit better but I wasn't really allowed to. He was better than me."

Even when Horna lost the second set his concentration never wavered, whereas Henman lost his and went off on what has become an increasingly familiar routine this year - a niggling row with the umpire.

It was not a vitriolic rant, simply that Henman was narked after being warned for swearing. Blame it on the back, perhaps, but Henman has become something of a grumpy old man.

This time he sounded off against the way the French and Spaniards get away with swearing in their language whereas any English invective immediately draws a warning. Better learn French and Spanish, then.

Warming to his grumpiness, Henman then launched a pre-Wimbledon blast against the balls used at the All England Club, a frequent theme over the past year, and similar to the bellyaching by Australia's Lleyton Hewitt on the nature of the courts at his own Open. Whingeing poms and Aussies: how the rest of the tennis world laughs at the delicious irony.

The Wimbledon courts may well have slowed down since 2001, with the balls losing some of their fizz, but it is all so relative as to be virtually inconsequential. You do not hear Federer complaining, or Roddick for that matter, and he hit the ball with more power and pace during the first set of last year's final against the Swiss than had ever been seen before at the All England Club.

Henman? Humbug.