To mark the centenary of Fred Perry's birth, his daughter Penny speaks to Paul Newman about her father's bitter struggles with the Wimbledon establishment, and what he'd have made of Andy Murray

Andy Murray's opening round against Andrei Pavel at the Australian Open was a short-lived affair, lasting just 45 minutes before the Romanian retired hurt.

Andy Murray accepted the challenge of being installed as joint favourite alongside Roger Federer to win the Australian Open with a message for the man who many believe is the best tennis player of all time: "I don't get nervous when I play you any more."

Bathing beauties and actresses were the off-court pursuits of a working-class lad from Stockport who became the last British man to win a Grand Slam, writes Nick Harris

They can't make up their mind about Andy Murray, can they? He might be British and exciting, with the potential to win things, but according to The Daily Telegraph he "will never make us swoon", because "we liked Tim Henman's Home Counties stiffness far more than the cursing aggression of this young man".

For a woman who dominated tennis for a quarter of a century and won Wimbledon a record nine times, it was unsurprising that the sporting world mourned the departure of Martina Navratilova, when she announced her retirement from the sport in 2006.

John Roberts interviews

Davis Cup

ONE OF the great "other women" of the cinema, Helen Vinson played occasional sympathetic roles, notably in the classic I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, but was mainly typecast as a blonde temptress out to steal somebody's husband or cheat on her own. Her skill was often to invest such roles with a veracity that made it easy to empathise with her despite her treatment of the hero or heroine. She herself was unhappy at such typecasting and in the mid- Thirties tried establishing a career in England, the second of her three husbands being the British tennis champion Fred Perry.

John Roberts meets a veteran of South Africa's last Davis Cup tie in Britain during the apartheid era

Women's final: American rises to world No 1 as Graf announces All England farewell

CUTTING THROUGH the hype that goes with being only two matches away from becoming the first Briton to win the Wimbledon men's singles title since Fred Perry in 1936, Tim Henman summarised his view of today's obstacle, Pete Sampras, the world's greatest player.

HE COULD have polished it off in two games. But Tim Henman won the hard way, taking two nail-biting hours yesterday to defeat the American Jim Courier and secure a place in the Wimbledon quarter-finals. The British number one kept his nerve to save three match points in the fifth set and went on to take the match, receiving a standing ovation.