Henman acknowledges pivotal point

Tim Henman headed home from the French Open haunted by another of those matches that might have been.

After trailing by two sets to love to Dmitry Tursunov when their match was halted for bad light last night, Henman came out in the noon sun and almost launched a valiant recovery.

Eventually he went down 6-3 6-2 4-6 6-4 but the scoreline does not tell the entire story of a match in which Henman, as so often in the past, squandered numerous chances.

Much more illuminating were the statistics surrounding break points.

Henman had 21 break points during the course of the match, of which he took only three. By contrast Tursunov had 14 and took six.

If one shot and one game comes back to haunt him in the twilight of his career it might well be the smash volley he missed at 30-40 on Tursunov’s serve in the sixth game of the fourth set.

After having won a thrilling third set, it was the stuff of nightmares: a completely open court, no opponent in sight and Henman dumped the shot into the net like a park player.

Said Henman: “I’m not sure I was on balance when I came into the net. I should have won the point. It’s just unfortunate timing. It was a big, big point to miss. It was a terrible shot but that’s the way it goes.

“But a lot of the other break points I didn’t get a look in. That becomes harder and harder to deal with when you know those opportunities are going to dictate the match.”

The psychological effect of missing out on a 4-2 lead and then finding himself 4-3 down after the next Tursunov serve was too much for Henman to bear.

And so it was the third time in the last four Grand Slams that Henman, who received a warning for an audible obscenity in the second set the night before, had lost to the big-hitting Russian.

To his credit Henman blamed only himself but he was critical of the tournament organisers and their handling of the light problems the night before when a prolonged debate ensued on Court Two with the German supervisor over whether the match should or should not continue with Tursunov leading by two sets to love.

Said Henman: “It was just a shambles. The decision-making was non-existent.

“I really wasn’t that bothered whether we carried on. Not a lot was going right so I was happy to stop.

"But then you come back in the locker room and there were five courts that were playing for half an hour. It was a bit of a circus.”

Henman will rest over the weekend and then start hitting balls on grass on Monday in readiness for Queen’s and Wimbledon.

Far from being down, however, after losing a match he could easily have won, he was upbeat that he is on the verge of arresting the slide in his career that has seen him drop to world number 71.

Said Henman: “In the third set I played really well and the momentum was with me. At the moment the mood is frustration but there’s another large part of me that is very, very confident about the way I have been playing, the way I’m moving on court.

“My movement is my strength and my enjoyment is probably as good as it has been in the last three or four years. That’s a big motivating factor.

“I’d like the results to improve but I don’t have any doubts they will improve because I’m playing good tennis

“It didn’t go my way today. In those conditions against that type of player it is difficult. I nearly was able to pull it off. But I feel very optimistic about things.”