Tennis: Henman still searching for comfort zone

It was at the Nottingham Open 12 months ago that Tim Henman discovered the form that swept him to Wimbledon's quarter-finals; this year he is groping around in the dark trying to locate it somewhere.

He beat Australia's Richard Fromberg 6-4, 6-7, 7-6 which pushes him into the last eight at the City of Nottingham Tennis Centre, and with seeds becoming something of a threatened species, he is now the most likely recipient of the pounds 28,000 first prize on Saturday. The way he is playing, however, logic does not come into it.

Yesterday his form came and went like someone had turned off a tap. At a set up and a break up Henman was heading for a routine victory, but by the end he was fortunate to cling on for what was his first win over someone in the top 200 since his elbow operation in March.

"It's very, very frustrating," he said after a 2hr 13min trial of his temperament. "I'm having to battle and fight just to hang in there." A player in the world's top 20 on his favourite surface should be finding things easier against someone ranked 81 places below him.

The point when the contest went out of his comfort zone arrived precisely at the same time as in his previous match against Andrew Richardson, the eighth game in the second set. Henman' s judgement went awry as he let go two shots that bounced in and suddenly he had surrendered the advantage of a break and then the set when he lost the tie-break 9-7.

Worse followed when Henman weakly hit a forehand into the net to go 2- 3 down in the deciding set and at 5-4 Fromberg, who delivered 20 aces, was serving for the match. Fortunately Henman broke when he had to and reached the quarter-final by winning the tie-break 7-4.

"The thing to take from that is that I kept going," he said. "You create your own luck and hopefully that will give me the chance to kick-start an improvement. I've got another match now and that's important.''

Jim Courier would endorse that. It is only four years since the American was runner-up at Wimbledon and at 26 he is hardly past his physical prime. Yet, thanks to injury and a slump, he arrived at Nottingham 28th in the world and will have not have enhanced that much after going down 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 to Australia's Jason Stoltenberg.

The day before Courier, a confirmed back-court player with four Grand Slam titles to his name, was saying he was becoming accustomed to the pace of grass although he gave a good impression of losing it completely as Stoltenberg took 12 out of the last 16 games.

That accounted for the sixth seed and the fifth and reigning champion, Jan Siemerink, followed soon afterwards, going down 5-7, 6-4, 6-2 to South Africa's Grant Stafford.

This left only Henman and Alex O'Brien as the surviving seeds and as the former is as inconsistent as the wind and the latter lost to the 19- year-old Briton, Martin Lee last week at Queen's, neither is copper bottomed to reach the final.