Henman and Petchey fall at the first

Tennis

Tennis

Britain's Tim Henman and Mark Petchey were both beaten in the the first round of the Indian Open tournament in New Delhi yesterday.

Henman, who recently reached the semi-finals of two ATP events, raced to a 6-1 success in the first set against Denmark's Frederik Fetterlein but then lost the next two sets, 6-1 and 6-0. Petchey was beaten 6-4, 6-4 by the top seed from Sweden, Thomas Enqvist.

Persistent rain forced the postponement of yesterday's scheduled first- round matches at the Hong Kong Open men's tournament, where Pete Sampras and Michael Chang were due to play the Canadian, Sebastian Lareau, and South Africa's Marcos Ondruska respectively.

Venus Williams, touted as one of the outstanding players of the future, retired with a hip injury in the first set of her first-round match at the Bausch & Lomb championships in Amelia Island, Florida, yesterday. The 197th-ranked 15-year-old, who has rarely been seen on tour since turning professional in October 1994, suffered a right hip joint injury in the sixth game against Germany's Veronika Martinek. Williams retired at 3-5 behind.

``I began to hurt and I was taught not to play when hurt [by my parents]." Williams said. "There's a lot of examples on the tour of player going on to to win a match and then not being able to play for months."