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Henman beats Moya in a marathon

Nirmal Shekar

The final set turned out to be a heart-stopping match within a match

AP

HENMANIA BEGINS: Tim Henman warmed the British hearts with a hard-fought win over Spain’s Carlos Moya on Tuesday.

London: Tim Henman looks his age, perhaps a few disappointing Wimbledon summers older than his age; the lines on his face bespeak of four full decades spent playing the hard game of life, and he is only 32.

But, then, the brave fans who have lasted the course, participating in the long, gut-wrenching, soul-shattering Henman soap opera at Wimbledon for over a dozen years have perhaps ended up looking twice as old as they are.

Hardly a surprise this. Imagine sitting through almost five full sets, enduring a rain delay in between, seeing your hero teetering on the very brink in the decider, and then trekking home to the prospect of a restless night of tossing and turning.

Even by Henman’s rather high standards, this was some drama spread over two days in the 121st Wimbledon championships. And nothing could have lifted the sinking spirits of the English fans more than the final outcome as Henman — with just four previous match victories in 2007 and world ranked 78 — found new vistas in his heart and soul to outlast Carlos Moya, the former French champion, 6-3, 1-6, 5-7, 6-2, 13-11 in four hours and 11 minutes to enter the second round.

When play was called off on the centre court at 9.18 p.m. on Monday, Moya had just staved off four matchpoints on serve in the 10th game of the final set. It was a set that turned out to be a heart-stopping match-within-a-match, a piece of red-hot climactic drama that might have seen a pair of gladiators turn weak in the legs.

Through a good part of that fifth set epic, many Henman fans buried their faces in their Union Jacks, unable to bear the suspense, as the ageing British hero’s fortunes waxed and waned. It is never easy to keep your eyes open when your dreams are coming true because you cannot deal with the possibility of their not coming true!

For Henman’s fans here, it has not been an easy journey — it has been an emotional roller-coaster that is certainly not recommended for the faint-hearted.

Perhaps a majority of Henmaniacs have a propensity to emotionally self-destruct. Dr. Freud might have had a thing or two to say on the subject.

If they had run the championships during Shakespeare’s time, the bard of Avon would have surely chosen Henman rather than Hamlet to vent messy existential angst. And the bull ring at Wimbledon, popularly known as the centre court, would have been a much better setting than any poorly-lit Danish castle or palace for a tortured soul to bare all and let us empathise with him in his gut-spilling moments of inner turmoil.

But, then, just when we might have believed that Henman was history, just when a younger generation of tennis fans were switching their loyalties and heralding the era of Andy Murray, the old boy is back to his old ways, keeping people on seat-edge hours on end, making pulses race and magically recreating the contours of a doomed dream.

“It has been documented that my form has not been good this year. But this place is so special to me, there are so many special memories, I always believe good things are going to happen,” said Henman.

In terms of a contest, this is about as good as it can get for a first round match. It had everything any fan would want — and a little more.

When Henman trailed Moya 4-2 and 40-15 in the fifth set on Monday evening, it appeared that a dank day would have just the sort of depressing end that Wimbledon fans are rather familiar with. But the four-time Wimbledon semifinalist battled back courageously before his Spanish opponent came up with some impressive serving in the gloaming to fight off four matchpoints in the 10th game.

For a man who has played so few matches this year, Henman was brilliant when the match resumed on Tuesday. He played the big points with tremendous belief, hitting six of 10 aces, including 47 of his 81 winners, in the final set which alone lasted two hours and two minutes.

When challenged seriously on serve for the first time in the decider, in the 23rd game, Henman came up with aces on successive breakpoints to hold to 12-11 before wrapping up the match on a Moya double fault in the next game on his seventh matchpoint.

“You like to finish on a winning forehand pass. But I was happy to see the end of it,” said Henman.

IMPORTANT RESULTS The results (prefix denotes seeding): Men (first round): 2-Rafael Nadal (Esp) bt Mardy Fish 6-3, 7-6(4), 6-3; 9-James Blake (USA) bt Igor Andreev (Rus) 6-3, 6-4, 6-4; 16-Lleyton Hewitt (Aus) bt Richard Bloomfield (Gb r) 7-5, 6-3, 7-5; 15-Ivan Ljubicic (Cro) bt Vince Spadea (USA) 6-4, 6-4, 4-6, 7-6(4); 7-Tomas Berdych (Cze) bt Nicolas Massu (Chi) 7-6(5), 6-4, 6-2; 19-Jonas Bjorkman (Swe) bt Fernando Vicente (Esp) 6-3, 6-1, 6-2; 23-David Nalbandian (Arg) bt Mischa Zverev (Ger) 6-3, 6-4, 6-2; 21-Dmitry Tursunov (Rus) bt Nicolas Almagro (Esp) 7-6(2), 6-4, 6-7(7), 6-3; 11-Tommy Robredo (Esp) bt Robert Kendrick (USA) 6-2, 3-6, 6-3, 6-7(5), 6-3; Aisam Qureshi (Pak) bt Lee Childs (Gbr) 6-3, 6-4, 7-6 (6); 24-Juan Ignacio Chela (Arg) bt Benjamin Becker (Ger) 3-6, 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 10-8; 12-Richard Gasquet (Fra) bt Bohdan Ulihrach (Cze) 6-3, 6-3, 6-4; 26-Marat Safin (Rus) bt Rik De Voest (RSA) 7-6(5), 6-4, 7-5

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