No more doubts, Tim

Matthew Norman13 April 2012

For the sports columnist, as for any other brand of pundit, there is nothing more unnerving than to be a lone voice. So imagine John McEnroe's relief, if you will, to learn that I totally agree with him about Tim Henman.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, McEnroe is hugely optimistic about the British No1's chances of ending his long wait for a Grand Slam tennis title this year, quite possibly in the Australian Open which began in Melbourne today.

Henman's record in the Grand Slams outside Wimbledon is nothing less than atrocious. He has never reached a quarter-final at the French, US or Australian Opens - an absurdity for one so lavishly gifted.

Whenever he has come close to the big breakthrough, his response has reinforced the impression that this Oxfordshire prep schoolboy is still terrified by the prospect, not of failure but success.

Once, in the fourth round in Paris, he led the Spanish clay court specialist, Alberto Berasategui, by two sets and a break and lost. Two years ago, in Melbourne, he reached the same stage as the highest seeded player left in the tournament, and promptly crashed out.

All the doubts about his mind raised by such failures, not to mention his well-known sudden lapses in concentration, made one fearful for him last July. What happened at Wimbledon was cruel beyond belief.

Henman blitzed semi-final opponent Goran Ivanisevic 6-0 in the third set to lead 2-1, to recap painfully, and was, at most, 20 minutes away from the final when the rain came. The rest is history - glorious history for Ivanisevic, whose Wimbledon must feature in the top 10 when Channel 4's 100 Greatest Sporting Moments concludes on Saturday; excruciating history for Henman and the millions of us watching from behind the cushion.

Admittedly, the same rain had previously saved him from equally certain defeat against Todd Martin but to come so agonisingly close and be denied by the weather might well, you felt, add a disastrous extra layer of defeatism to an already brittle sporting psyche. Even now, it would be rash to say that it didn't. It is quite possible that, if and when Henman is next close to a Grand Slam final, the memory of the Ivanisevic match will jog the subliminal conviction that he is fatally jinxed.

Yet his recovery from that disappointment, aided according to McEnroe by his hiring a brilliant coach in Larry Stefanki, has been so splendid that I doubt it. Following last week's impressive tournament win in Adelaide, he has an enticing draw in the Australian Open which, because it comes at a time of the year when many players are barely match fit, sticks far more closely to the form book than the other three.

If Henman, third favourite behind Lleyton Hewitt and Yevgeny Kafelnikov now that Andre Agassi has withdrawn, can repeat his Adelaide victory over the also in-form Greg Rusedski, he may face another huge server, Mark Philippoussis, in the fourth round. Neither would be easy over five sets, but on present form you would take Henman to beat them both and reach a foreign Grand Slam quarter-final at last ... and from that point, anything is possible.

It would be gruesomely typical of the old Henman to undermine all this optimism by crashing out in the next round after beating Todd Larkham in straight sets. But if there really is a new, focused, ruthless Henman, I am expecting some exceedingly late nights in front of the telly in the fortnight ahead.

There is a grave danger for him in the weather once again (in this case, extreme heat) but it would be an enchanting irony if the heartbreak of Wimbledon proved to be the end of Tim Henman but the making of him.

I won't be remotely surprised if he reaches the semi-finals at the very least.

The Beeb hits bullseye with its darts coverage

David's unlikely win reminds me a little of Bob Champion winning the Grand National on Aldiniti. It's true that he hasn't had cancer or any serious trouble with his fetlocks, but he does suffer from haemophilia, a blood disorder that prevents him straightening his arm so that he had to develop a unique throwing technique simply to be able to play without dying. Even more amazing, David is also the first pro in darts history to have cheekbones.

An enchanting conclusion to a joyous week of televised leisure activity came when his tearful dad rang from Queensland during the postmatch interview and opened with a most un-Australian "hello darling".

My only quibble with the BBC's excellent coverage - so much more homely and droll than the misplaced portentousness in Sky's rival world championship - even though that does feature the true world champion in Phil Taylor concerns the scheduling. Until the final there was almost no live action, when the schedules should be cleared for this majestic entertainment.

The mutation of Bobby George from Adam Ant lookalike into the menacing, gangland figure of today is a delight, as are the dazzlinglyblazered fatties on the platform.

As for the wondrously incompetent commentary of dear old Tony Green, the man's a national treasure. Greeting the the clinching double 10 with a delirious "yeeesss, it's Tony Davis!" was a masterstroke, and if he keeps up this form for a year or two more he will be recognised for what he is. Whoever would have dreamt that we have so exotic a creature as the poor man's Murray Walker? We need much more of him and of live darts on BBC2 next year.

Game pays penaltywhen fans are given a free rein

Admitting to David Frost that events at Cardiff last Sunday weren't too clever, Mr Davies insisted that things were, by and large, pretty good at Premiership grounds.

To one who spent last Wednesday night in the lower south stand at Stamford Bridge observing the ancient ritual of Chelsea beating Spurs, this came over a little smug. I didn't see the bottle being thrown at Les Ferdinand, but many of those throwing coins at Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink were my neighbours, and it wasn't pretty to behold.

What was so disturbing here was not the misbehaviour, odious though that was: as some of us have been twittering on about for years, violence has never left football, merely been kept bubbling under the surface by more sophisticated policing and surveillance techniques. It will erupt whenever the lid is taken off the pan, and that's what was so disturbing on Wednesday - the absence of any noticeable stewarding whatsoever.

As you enter the lower south stand, massive signs inform you of an apparently simple message: "NO STANDING".

Not for one millisecond of the match, meanwhile, did a single Spurs fan in that area sit down - and at no point, to my knowledge, was any attempt made, even over the public address system, to ask us politely to take our seats.

Once the more Neanderthal element of the supportership is encouraged by this laissez-faire attitude into imagining it can do what it chooses, offensive behaviour becomes inevitable. So it proved - and when the coin throwing began, the response was identical to the reaction to the standing.

No one involved with Chelsea - not the police hired for the night by the club, not those invisible stewards, not even the stadium announcer - had a thing to say about it. Most odd.

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