Tim Henman labelled Britain’s miserable opening day of Wimbledon as “very disappointing” and believes the country needs greater strength in depth.
All 10 home players who completed their matches on Monday lost, while Jack Draper joined Emma Raducanu in pulling out of the tournament.
Henman believes more injury problems for Britain’s two brightest hopes are significantly more concerning than the defeats, with the draws particularly difficult this year.
“When you look at the individual matches, the vast majority were going to be the underdogs, and they came up short,” Henman told the Press Association.
“There are two barometers in professional tennis. There’s the top 100, and that means you’re getting into the slams, and then there’s the top 250.
“We’ve had a few people drop out of the top 100. I think the top of the game has been a little unfortunate. The group that excites me moving forward is the next group from 100 to 250.
“We’ve got the three young women (Hannah) Klugman, Mimi Xu, and (Mika) Stojsavljevic. They have enormous potential for the future. So we do need to stay patient, and likewise on the men’s side.”
While Britain currently only has five players in the top 100, on the men’s side, 11 sit between 100 and 250, seven of whom are 24 or under.
“We want more in each (category), and they’ve done a much better job, certainly on the men’s side, of getting more and more players in that top 250,” added Henman.
“But the next step is to break through into the top 100. So that’s what you want to see continuing. So a really, really tough day, very disappointing. But it’s not all doom and gloom.”
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While Raducanu’s absence with a stress fracture came as no great surprise, given she had clearly been struggling in practice, the announcement that Draper would not be able to take on Taylor Fritz was a huge blow.
After a year of repeated injury struggles, Draper appeared finally to be fit only to suffer a recurrence of the bone bruising in his arm that kept him out for nearly seven months from this time last year.
Former British number one Henman said: “Jack, the last 12 months have really been a nightmare, and it’s so unfortunate, because 12 months ago he was playing some of the best tennis of his life, and he’s really hardly played since then.
“He’s got the most incredible work ethic, you know that he’s cutting no corners, but you look at the extent of the injuries he’s had, and he’s had shoulder, he’s had ab, he’s had knee, he’s got arm. It’s so tough, and it emphasises how demanding the sport is.
“Likewise, with Emma, she’s had wrist and foot and now shin, and you’ve got to have that resilience.
“I can only imagine that it must be soul-destroying. The worst time for a professional player is injury, for sure, because when you lose form and you’re playing badly, you feel like you can do something about it.
“I feel so bad for them. You’ve got to have that optimism, and you hope that things finally will settle down, they’ll have a clean bill of health, and then they can show their qualities on the court because they’re both brilliant players.”
Henman was speaking at Wimbledon Park, where Vodafone is giving fans the chance to return serves from a robotic arm mimicking those on Centre Court.
More than a third of British people in a recent survey thought they could return a professional serve, but Henman is not so sure.
“The serving monster looks pretty intimidating,” he said. “I do respect the public’s confidence, but I think they are misplaced.”
