Henman starts to find 'habit of winning'

Tim Henman claimed he was determined to "get back into the habit of winning" after returning to action yesterday with a victory over Nicolas Lapentti, of Ecuador, at the BMW Open here.

The British No 1 won 7-5, 4-6, 6-1 on clay, his least favourite surface, to claim only his second victory of an injury-hit season. The match was only Henman's fifth since undergoing shoulder surgery last year.

A previous comeback attempt was put on hold when an unrelated problem affecting the same shoulder began to trouble him during the Nasdaq-100 Open in Miami last month. It forced him to pull out of the Masters Series event in Monte Carlo earlier this month, but he felt fit enough to accept a wild card to compete here in Germany, where he has been seeded seventh.

"I'm hitting the ball well but it's all about confidence on the match court," Henman said. "I need to compete as much as possible and get back into the habit of winning."

Henman was pushed hard in the first two sets but began to find his touch in the third, claiming two early breaks to race into a 4-0 lead and wrap up victory soon afterwards.

Henman was not the only seed to get a stern test, the sixth-seeded Russian, Mikhail Youzhny, was pushed hard by the Norwegian qualifier Jan-Frode Andersen before coming through 4-6, 7-5, 6-3.

The top seed, Roger Federer, started with a 6-4, 6-3 win over the Croat Zeljko Krajan, and the local favourite Rainer Schüttler went through by beating Austria's Jürgen Melzer by the same score.