The moment is still present in Tim Henman’s mind. The day he decided not to do more. The conversation that made him realize that enough was enough.
“It was about 12:15 or 12:30 in the morning the night I lost to John Isner in the first round in Washington in 2007,” Henman recalled.
‘We were in the bar of a very nice hotel talking to my coach Paul Annacone. He was and is one of my best friends. And I said, “For the first time, I think this will become my job and not my hobby.”
And he said matter-of-factly, “Well, if you’re not enjoying it, why are you doing it?”
‘And I said: “What, retire?” And he said, “Why would you?”
Tim Henman still vividly remembers when he decided to retire from tennis in 2007.
Henman has encouraged Andy Murray to continue playing if he still enjoys it.
‘I looked at my diary and I had the two Masters 1000 in Canada and Cincinnati, the US Open and the Davis Cup at Wimbledon against Croatia in the World Group qualification.
And when that occurred to me, I suddenly saw the finish line. I had two months left. All the big events. I felt very lucky to finish at Wimbledon in front of a British crowd.
“I won my singles on Friday, played doubles with Jamie Murray on Saturday and hit a winner with my final shot to win the tie. I played well and then retired.”
It looked as though Henman would not be the last man to retire alongside Jamie Murray at Wimbledon. Andy Murray had wanted to play doubles alongside his brother at this year’s championships, which looked set to be his last, before back surgery last week cruelly put his fairytale ending in doubt. The two-time champion, however, is not ruling out his participation.
For Andy, the question of when to retire seems to be a battle between heart and mind. The heart is still well and truly in the sport he loves. But the nagging voice in his head that after years of injuries, the body has finally had enough, grows stronger.
In Henman’s view, the choice is simple.
“If you’re enjoying it, you should keep playing,” Henman said. ‘It’s the best job in the world. There is a lot of time to be retired. That is your prerogative.
“He’s said he doesn’t see himself playing beyond this summer, which isn’t necessarily specific and doesn’t need to be specific.” But if we look at the calendar, does that mean Wimbledon or the Olympics? I don’t know. Or could it go further, to the US Open?
Henman praised Emma Raducanu for working hard to improve her fitness and stamina.
“I don’t have an answer for that. My only opinion I can add is that he should play as long as he wants.”
Although two-time champion Murray’s participation at Wimbledon remains up in the air, Henman will be back in SW19 working for the BBC three decades after he first reached the main draw of the Wimbledon singles. “It makes me feel very old,” said the 49-year-old, who was beaten in four sets by Germany’s David Prinosil in the first round in 1994.
The sport has changed enormously since then, especially with the growing influence of Saudi Arabia.
“I’m a golf junkie and what’s happened in golf, as a fan, has been very unsatisfying,” Henman said. “It’s really diluted the product. I want to see the best players playing each other.
“The Saudis don’t come to tennis, they are to tennis. Hopefully, as a sport, we can all work together, whether it’s the Grand Slams or the ATP and the WTA, to make sure we have a better solution than golf, because it hasn’t worked at all.”
Player welfare is also in the spotlight more than ever, particularly after Novak Djokovic was forced to play into the early hours of the morning in Paris before suffering a knee injury that could keep him out of Wimbledon in the next round of the French Open.
Closer to home, Emma Raducanu continues to recover from life on tour following a series of injuries. The 21-year-old, a Grand Slam winner in 2021, opted to skip the French Open and the Olympics later this year in order to manage her workload.
“Having a proper schedule is essential for physical and mental health,” Henman explained. ‘When you move on to a specific case like Raducanu, with the surgeries he’s had, I think he’s been working incredibly hard physically to improve his fitness and his ability to recover.
“I think she played exceptionally well on clay courts. Now on grass, it’s a good surface for her. She likes to dictate, she likes to be proactive.
“If we go back to the time when he qualified and won the US Open, he had no physical foundation to build on because he had studied for his A levels and had not had the opportunity to work in the gym.
“Now that she has done it, I think it will put her in a much better position to showcase her tremendous abilities.”