Henman coach wants more aggression

Paul Annacone is determined to make Tim Henman live up to his ‘Tiger’ nickname.

Henman and Annacone are currently undertaking an intensive 10-day training session ahead of Christmas.

And Annacone, who spent the vast majority of his coaching career with seven-time Wimbledon champion Pete Sampras, wants to ensure Henman is more aggressive in future.

“Parts of Pete can be put into Tim,” said the 40-year-old. “Pete went into matches knowing that you must possess a weapon if you are going to attack.

“I want Tim to get more pop on his first serve and aggression on his second. If he double faults a few times, no problem.

“Technically there’s nothing wrong with Tim’s serving motion, we will need to work on a more aggressive philosophy.

“I watched Tim play Pete in a couple of Wimbledon semi-finals and know his serve can be a big weapon. His greatest strength is being a natural serve and volleyer.”

Henman attempted to change his serve under former coach Larry Stefanki to be more consistent, but taking the pace off his first serve merely made it much easier for his opponents to return and break serve – particularly at Wimbledon.

“We both feel that it’s important for me to be able to hurt my opponents and dictate matches as much as possible,” Henman said on his personal website, www.timhenman.org.

“That’s one of the aspects of my game that I was most pleased about in Paris (where he won the Masters Series event in November), and it’s certainly something that we’ve been focusing on over the last few days and I’m sure it’s something that I’ll be trying to continue to work on as much as possible throughout next year.

“Paul and I have been friends for a while but this is the first time we’ve actually got out on court and worked on specific aspects of my game and it’s been great.

“It was obvious right from the start that we viewed the game similarly and whilst there’s been no huge overhaul of my game we’ve been working on some subtle changes that will hopefully help me on the match court.”