Come On, Tim!

Nobody fancies Tim Henman. Even the teenage girls who have gathered in front of the screen on Henman Hill, the main hang-out for his fans at Wimbledon, to scream their way through his quarter-final match against Andre Sa, are unmoved by his looks.

"His stomach's all right, but his nose scares me," giggles Lara, 15, shaking her head. The bells on her red, white and blue jester's hat jingle. "Don't be mean!" squeals her friend Claire. "He looks like my brother." They have St George's flags painted on their faces, which are puckered with embarrassment.

So why do they like him?

"We like him cos he's English!"

Henman, of course, is not just English, he is storybook English. He looks as if he has walked out of a poem by Rupert Brooke. Around the grounds of the All England club this week, mini versions of him could be seen swerving louchely about, hands in their pockets, proud graduates of the home counties tennis circuit. Their world - one of strictly enforced dress codes and intolerance of silliness - sits bizarrely alongside the excesses of the Henman fans. "Is Henmania destroying Wimbledon?" sniffed Leo McKinstry in the Daily Mail this week, with reference to the fans' "puerile yelling, cheering and jeering," when the more pressing question was surely: how does a man so seemingly devoid of passion inspire such buoyant responses in others?

Perhaps it's the primness of the setting, but the fanaticism of the Henman fans feels slightly forced, as if doing naughty things such as defying the no-banner-on-centre-court rule or shouting "Go Tim!" in the library-like hush between points is as much of a thrill to them as watching the match. Some fans, even those who have queued all night to see him, filter their enthusiasm for Tim through a layer of sarcasm, the effortless irony of the middle-class teenager.

"Yeah right, I'm here cos I really love Tim's legs," says Robert, 16, from north London. He is in the front row on centre court, and started queuing at 5pm the previous night. He has written an alternative version to Kipling's If which opens, "If you can hold your serve when all about you/Are losing theirs and blaming the umpire." He and his friends hold banners folded up like scrolls, which, when the steward isn't looking, they unfold and snap shut again before he turns around. The banners read, "We love you Tim and we always will." Robert's friend Sam says, "Tim is so arrogant," to which Robert replies knowingly, "He's not arrogant, he's quietly confident."

Behind the boys sits Gillian, a childminder from Northants, and her daughter Louise. They also queued overnight for their £56 seats, even though Tim, admits Gillian, "is a little bit boring." Still, she's a big fan because "he gives us something to be proud of". Louise likes him because "he's a solid British type, I like his net play". They sometimes wish he would smile more, but, says Gillian, "we've learned to love him".

For many Henman fans, learning to love him means looking beyond his starey eyes, his US Marine's haircut and the humourless little punch in the air he does after scoring a point. When he retires from the tennis world he is guaranteed a lucrative second career on the motivational speaker circuit, lecturing executives on how to unleash the tiger within, or at least, how to channel it into a repertoire of tight-lipped gestures. The fans' love for him is based on a strange combination of admiration for his ability to win, and endearment at his one-of-us ability to lose. "He shows a typical British vulnerability," says Max, 21, a philosophy student from Gloucestershire. "He is a gallant loser." How will Max celebrate if Tim wins today? "I'll drive home in a slightly better mood than if he doesn't."

"He's been playing like a complete pansy," says Max's friend, Kate, fondly. A student on her summer break, she is employed at the tournament as a security guard.

While Anna Kournikova is mobbed every time she leaves the players' enclosure, Kate says Tim walks around more or less unmolested. His fans are not of the shirt-tugging, back-slapping, hands-on variety. While bearing all the trappings of crazy World Cup fans, "Henmaniacs", like Henman himself, are essentially well mannered. "We've had no grief," says a policeman patrolling the grassy slope of Henman Hill like a park keeper. "You don't get the lower grade of people in tennis, if I can say that. Tim is a good role model, although he might appeal more to young people if he changed his hairstyle and so forth."

At lunchtime it starts to rain and over the seats on centre court rows of corporate umbrellas the size of satellites push open. The blazer brigade retreat to their enclosures. The fans on Henman Hill drape waterproof ponchos over their rucksacks and wander about like camels. "This has been the year of the true fans, not all that lot in their hospitality tents," says Jan, 43, a policewoman from Surrey. Jennie, 52, an accounts officer from Kings Langley, says, "I think Tim's got less boring since he got married. Hopefully when the baby comes, he'll lighten up even more." She is wrapped in a union flag left over from the jubilee. She doesn't support Greg Rusedski because "he's not really British, is he?"

Some of Henman's fans found the World Cup too heady and think Wimbledon offers a more controlled environment for a nice bit of flag-waving. "It's not so much about Tim Henman," says Robert, 38, who got up at 4.45am to buy his tickets. "It's about patriotism. But I like the fact he takes it seriously. It's his profession - why shouldn't he?"

At 4.30, there is a disturbance outside the player's enclosure. Kournikova is standing in the window, talking on her mobile phone and looking beadily down at the scrum of teenage boys screaming at her. A family of Henmaniacs dressed in red white and blue look disapprovingly on. They have nets on their heads. "We're called the Net Heads," explains Janice. "We do all the tournaments. We did the Davis Cup. We're from Atlanta, but we're supporting Tim today because he's the closest thing to an American we've got in the tournament. I think he's charming. You know, English."

Sue, 44, runs a sports shop in Wiltshire. She is wearing a baseball cap decorated with Henman badges. She has posters of him in her home. She has flown her mother, Angela, all the way in from Gibraltar to see Tim play today. "He's something for England," she says. "He pulled it off when he had that stomach bug. " What else does she like about him? She thinks for a while. "He's very polite."

Two elderly ladies are emerging from centre court, awkwardly eating slices of pizza. They stare, mouths agape, as the Net Heads walk by. "Tim has a nice clean image," says Marjorie, after recovering herself. "He controls himself. He conducts himself very well under pressure. He's everyone's ideal son."

Mary, her friend, thinks for a while and eventually says: "I like Tim because in a funny way, he reminds me of Doris Day."