Henman turns hitman

Britain's leading hope has finally found a weapon that can make him a winner

COMING from Pete Sampras, it was an observation worth noting. "He needs a weapon," the soon-to-be three-times Wimbledon champion said. A year on, Tim Henman can approach Wimbledon knowing that he is well on the way to acquiring one.

Overall, the rising young British player left a very favourable impression on Sampras when he lost to him in the second round of the 1995 Wimbledon, pushing him to a tie-break before going down in three sets. "He has a pretty good all-round game," was Sampras's post-match verdict. "He has a pretty good head on his shoulders. Time will tell to see if he can put it all together to be a top-100 player.

Time has indeed told, and it hasn't taken very long about it. From being ranked 174 a year ago, Henman was last week up to 61 after a year of almost uninterrupted progress in which the development of various weapons has continued apace and he has begun to make his mark on the ATP Tour. But if there is one aspect of Henman's game which has above all others helped bring about his surge up the rankings, it is his serve.

"There's a big difference in it between now and a year ago," Henman said last week. "I can put a lot of the better results I've had down to my serve. I'm probably hitting it 10 per cent harder, and it's a lot more consistent. That's pretty important in a serve."

Everything flows from the serve. If it's going well, the rest of a player's game will tend to go well too. But what is mainly required of a serve, especially on grass, is that it is powerful and accurate enough for it to guarantee picking up points - "free points" as they are referred to in the game - when they are really needed.

A year ago, that could not be said of Henman's serve. At 6ft 1in, he had height on his side, but not strength. "I've spent far more time in the gym in the last year than I did before," Henman said. "It's also an endurance thing. In a five-set match you need to be able to serve as well in the fifth set as you do in the first."

That has meant many hours bench-pressing, doing leg-extension exercises, strengthening his upper body and his shoulder muscles. By no means easy work, but at any rate uncomplicated. The challenge, once the raw materials are in shape, is the more testing one of getting the rhythm and the timing right, and trusting in one's ability to hit hard and remain accurate.

"It was always a perfectly good service action," David Felgate, Henman's coach, said. "So we didn't do anything technical to it. It was just a question of making Tim aware that he does have the strength to hit the ball hard, and consistently hard. It's still not there yet, but there are times when he does serve very well and it can be a weapon. There's a tendency when you try to hit harder that you lose the timing. So it's important to get the balance right. And that isn't so easy when you're in a match situation. It's mainly a case of going on to the practice court and just keep hitting serves so that you don't have to think about it."

As a server, Henman is no Sampras or Goran Ivanisevic, and never will be. But the 10 per cent improvement he speaks about takes him, at his fastest, into the very respectable 115-120mph range on his first serve. The really big servers come in at 130mph and higher, but Henman's pace is more than adequate to settle matters in one point, provided the ball lands in the right place. "There's a certain speed you want to get to, but if you place it well that's the key thing," Felgate said. "Stefan Edberg didn't hit the biggest serves, but it was where he hit them that counted."

Then there is the question of stringing serves together. "The improvement with Tim is not so much with the serve itself," Felgate said. "When he hits his best serve I'm not sure it can really be any better than that. But if he were to hit his best serve all the time, that would be a huge improvement."

No player can ever reach such a level of perfection, but whereas a year ago Felgate reckons Henman was averaging a best possible serve two times out of 10, he now thinks he's doing it five times out of 10. "You can't ask for much more than seven out of 10, but there are days when Tim's up to that level."

There is still work to be done on all aspects of Henman's game. His forehand is a strength, but, Felgate, feels, his movement before making a volley could be improved. Though as Henman points out, a good serve, ought to make the follow-up volley easier.

One of Henman's best performances in the last 12 months was when he met Yevgeny Kafelnikov in the semi-finals of an indoor tournament in Rotterdam in March, and is a reason why he is refusing to feel too daunted at the prospect of facing the outstanding Russian again when they meet in the first round of Wimbledon this week.

On the face of it, the No 5 seed and new French Open champion could hardly be a tougher opponent, but Henman can draw strength from the fact that he had a set point against Kafelnikov in their Rotterdam match before losing 7-5, 6-3, and he believes that challenges like this are best met early in a tournament. "It won't be easy, but I'm really looking forward to it," Henman said.

"There are better draws," Felgate said, "but as soon as I'd taken it in, I thought, OK, you can win that." And if he does, the talk will be less of what Henman lacks than what he's got.

Rising fast: Most improved men on the Tour

Player '96pts '95pts Rise '96rank '95rank Rise

1 Nicolas Lapentti (Ecu) 555 37 518 83 531 448 2 Magnus Gustafsson (Swe) 939 153 786 39 242 203 3 Carlos Moya (Sp) 1240 178 1062 21 214 193 4 Stephane Simian (Fr) 536 137 399 85 264 179 5 Mikael Tillstrom (Swe) 810 193 617 55 196 141 6 Felix Mantilla (Sp) 1082 257 825 28 158 130 7 Sandon Stolle (Aus) 519 177 342 89 216 127 8 Tim Henman (GB) 768 226 542 61 174 113 9 Chris Woodruff (US) 799 246 553 56 168 112 10 Alex Radulescu (Ger) 472 181 291 100 212 112 11 Hicham Arazi (Mor) 581 202 379 80 188 108 12 Younes El Aynaoui (Mor) 701 238 463 68 171 103 13 Filip Dewulf (Bel) 829 297 532 52 145 93 14 Mark Philippoussis (Aus) 1051 424 627 30 111 81 15 Jakob Hlasek (Swit) 920 398 522 41 118 77 16 Karim Alami (Mor) 796 329 467 57 133 76 17 Hernan Gumy (Arg) 905 404 501 43 116 73 18 Jiri Novak (Cz Rep) 901 424 477 44 112 68 19 Stefano Pescosolido (It) 692 323 369 70 138 68 20 Nicklas Kulti (Swe) 512 261 251 90 155 65