Henman in the money
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Your support makes all the difference.Tim Henman yesterday became the million-dollar man as his campaign to qualify for the Masters Cup received a welcome boost here. The British No 1 got through his opening test at the Swiss Indoor tournament last night, just three days after becoming a father for the first time.
Henman showed no signs of rustiness as he powered past Cedric Pioline 6-1, 6-4 to take his season's earnings past a million US dollars. Pioline, the Frenchman who reached the Wimbledon final in 1997 – a feat Henman has never achieved – has suffered through injury recently and is obviously not yet back to his best form.
Henman is the top seed and defending champion in Basle, having beaten the Swiss hope Roger Federer in last year's final. But he is in need of ranking points this week having fallen to joint seventh in the Champions Race after last week's Masters Series event in Madrid.
The British No 1 could be excused his second-round exit to the Thai player Paradorn Srichaphan in the Spanish capital, although he had comprehensively beaten Srichaphan in the recent Davis Cup tie between Britain and Thailand. Understandably perhaps, his mind was elsewhere, but a similarly early exit in Basle would leave him needing a big result at the Paris Masters Series event next week.
With only the top seven players in the Champions Race guaranteed to qualify for the Shanghai-hosted Masters Cup, the £2m end-of-season event which is lucrative even by the standards of the richest and best players, Henman knows he cannot let his concentration slip.
After racing through the opening set, Henman wrapped up victory with ease as Pioline was never able to raise his game to the level where Henman was under serious threat.
Apart from Davis Cup play, this was Henman's first victory since the second round at the US Open in August when he defeated the big-serving Belgian Dick Norman.
Henman will be back in action today against another Frenchman, Nicolas Escude, who advanced when his Russian opponent Nikolay Davydenko retired after dropping the first set on a tie-break. Henman does not have a particularly good record against Escude, having lost five of their eight matches, though he has won their last two – in Indian Wells and Hamburg earlier this year.
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