FOURTEEN YEARS of nail-biting, heart stopping and often dream shattering tennis. Whether you love or hate Tim Henman’s truly British oh-so-close style, you cannot deny that he has brought us some of the most exhilarating matches of the last decade. The announcement that he was to retire was expected, especially after two seasons of on-off injury problems.
Dignified until the end, he played out the final sets of his professional career against Croatia in the Davis cup, leaving Britain with an emphatic victory that enables them to play in the World Group in 2008. Henman has had a wonderful career but ultimately he was never quite good enough to truly dominate the major tournaments.
We all hopelessly followed him, adding cries of “C’mon Tim” to no avail, in the hope he would finally triumph at a Grand Slam. He never managed it, yet he was our only chance of success and who is there to replace him? Andy Murray’s there, but what about all the other young superstars that every other nation seems to produce by the bucket-load?
In the week following Henman’s retirement, it emerged that two of the country’s most promising young players have had their funding revoked, seemingly due to some ‘unprofessional’ comments and photographs on social networking site Bebo. The Lawn Tennis Association’s stance on the matter was concisely expressed by their chief executive who stated, “They’ve either got to behave like professional athletes or go and do something else.”
Far from encouraging young people to become involved in the game they persist in their pompous, pretentious and frankly unrealistic notions of professionalism. In order to produce and entice talented young players they must attempt to shed their image of snobbish antiquity.
David Rice and Naomi Broady: the second best junior and the Under-18 champion, both of whom were persecuted for making references to occasional nights out, drinking and eating pizza. Some of this information was apparently two years old. I understand that a healthy lifestyle is fundamental to reaching the summit of sporting success but at what cost are these condemnations to the future of British tennis?
The most popular sports people tend to be those who break the rules such as the flawed geniuses of Ronnie O’Sullivan, Shane Warne and George Best. Tim Henman provided a great service to the sport but has his passion ever besieged us or indeed provided him with that extra spark? What we need is talented, cocky and arrogant sports stars. Professionalism is important but performance is more so. Quite simply, we want winners.
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