Henman reaches for the sky

Roger Taylor was a little star-struck. Last week he had rubbed shoulders on Australia's aptly named Gold Coast with Steve Redgrave, and it was an experience that still lingered as the former Wimbledon semi-finalist stood inside the Sydney Opera House and perused the Olympic tennis draw.

"It's such a huge experience being here. I really think the Olympics are bigger than a grand slam tournament. You may play 32 of them in a career, but perhaps only two Olympics," said Taylor, who at the beginning of this year was coaching juniors and is now Britain's Davis Cup captain and Olympic team manager.

As a player he had no Olympic chance at all for, although tennis was one of the founding sports in 1896 it went missing after the Paris games of 1924, and did not officially return until 12 years ago in Seoul.

Hence Taylor's overwhelming emotional feel for the event which led him, on being asked what he hoped for his team, to reach for the Olympic skies: "Oh, we hope for a gold medal, no doubt about it." And that, effectively, means one hope: Tim Henman.

The draw has not been altogther kind. The British No1, seeded seventh after the late withdrawal of Sweden's Thomas Enqvist, has a tricky opening match on Tuesday against Slovakia's enigmatic Karol Kucera, who has frequently troubled him in the past. Furthermore, Kucera is coached by Miloslav Mecir, who won gold in Seoul.

Henman also finds himself in the same quarter as the new US Open champion Marat Safin, the No1 seed. It is a daunting quarter-final prospect although Safin, who arrived in Sydney via Tashkent, will surely be feeling a little weary.

Greg Rusedski, in the same half of the draw as Henman, also has a testing start against France's Arnaud Clement, who knocked out Andre Agassi at the US Open. Agassi is not defending his Atlanta gold for family illness reasons.

"At some moment Greg's game is going to click," said Taylor optimistically. Henman, who has been training hard and is eager to get going, described the Olympic centre court - based on the same design as Wimbledon's No1 court - as "medium fast". In Atlanta he and Neil Broad took silver in the doubles, and Henman recently described the opening ceremony there as "the biggest sporting moment in my life".

Perhaps the happiest man in the British party is Barry Cowan who, because of several more late withdrawals - including Nicolas Lapentti, Andrei Medvedev, Hicham Arazi, Younes El Aynaoui and the Barcelona gold medal winner Marc Rosset - has found himself in the main singles draw, where he will play Canada's Daniel Nestor, another left-hander.

Cowans also plays alongside Kyle Spencer for Britain in the doubles, where they face a tough first-round match against the Russian pair of Safin and Yevgeny Kafelnikov.

Women's tennis is in such a poor state in Britain that there is nobody in the singles, while the doubles pairing of Julie Pullin and Lorna Woodroffe will do extremely well to get past next week's first round, where they will come up against the Dutch couple Kristie Boogert and Miriam Oremans.

The draw, incidentally, was made entirely by computer, as was the placing of the seeds. Without a doubt it was all above board, but the absence of an official pulling balls out of a bag, however fumblingly, was somewhat unnerving. Surely this will never happen at Wimbledon.