Ancic silences Henmania

Mario Ancic revealed it was his success at dealing with Tim Henman’s army of fans on Centre Court that underpinned his victory over the British number one in today’s Wimbledon quarter-final.

The 20-year-old Croatian, making his third successive appearance at the All England Club, triumphed 7-6 (7/5) 6-4 6-2 against Henman, who was dumped out at the last-eight stage for the second successive year.

“I’m very happy because I think I played a great match. Henman had the crowd behind him and I just stayed quiet throughout the whole match, until I won,” said the Croatian.

“The crowd supported him the whole time. Every point he made they cheered. I just tried to be as a calm as possible and that got me through.”

Ancic, whose previous best Grand Slam performance was reaching the fourth round at last year’s Australian Open, felt his game grew stronger as the match progressed.

“I’ve been improving with each match and today I think I played really well. The first set was very tough because Tim got a lot of first services in and that made it difficult,” he said.

“I started returning well in the second set and began to gain confidence. I managed to break him and from there I started playing very good tennis. I was in control.”