Tim Henman - Early Life

Early Life

Henman comes from a talented sporting family: his father Tony, a solicitor, was accomplished at various sports, including tennis and squash. His mother Jane, a dress designer, played Junior Wimbledon and introduced Tim and his older brothers Michael and Richard to tennis as soon as they could walk on the family's grass tennis court. His great grandfather played at Wimbledon. His maternal grandfather, Henry Billington, played at Wimbledon between 1948 and 1951, and he represented Britain in the Davis Cup in 1948, 1950 and 1951. In 1901 his maternal great-grandmother, Ellen Stanwell-Brown (or Ellen Mary Stowell-Brown), was reputedly the first woman to serve overarm at Wimbledon. His maternal grandmother, Susan Billington, appeared regularly at Wimbledon in the 1950s, playing mixed doubles on Centre Court with her husband Henry, reaching the third round of the ladies' doubles in 1951, 1955 and 1956.

Henman grew up in Weston-on-the-Green, Oxfordshire, a village with an estimated population of 500. At home, the family owned a grass tennis court in their back garden. Henman began playing tennis before the age of three with a shortened squash racket. At this stage, he was already teaching himself how to serve and volley. At an early stage in his life, Henman decided if he did not succeed in tennis, he would become a golf player instead.

Henman attended the Weston-on-the-Green Primary School between the ages of five and seven, and enrolled in the private Dragon School in Oxford from seven to eleven. He excelled in all sports but was always best at tennis. But Henman was small for his age, a factor which would bode against him in the future. In 1985, he was appointed the school's captain of tennis and led the school's tennis team to win 21 out of 27 matches. He remains to this day the only student who has won both school's junior and senior tennis tournaments the same year. From the age of eight until his introduction to the Slater Squad, Henman received coaching from the David Lloyd Tennis Centre, where he was given personal lessons by former professional player Onny Parun from New Zealand. In retrospect, Parun stated that Henman's greatest strength "had always been his head." David Lloyd noticed the same mental toughness and was impressed.

He later left the Dragon School after he attained a scholarship for the Reed's School in Cobham, Surrey. Henman received the scholarship after a physical test; to run until you dropped. Henman, along with Marc Moreso and David Loosemore, did not drop, and was given the scholarship. At this point in his life, Lloyd persuaded Henman's parents to allow him to pursue a tennis career. In retrospect, Lloyd notes, Henman's parents understood what many don't; "you can always go back to higher education at twenty-two or twenty-three but that that is far too late to start a serious tennis career."

Henman was picked up by the Slater Squad, a group funded by one-time millionaire Jim Slater, at the age of eleven. The main goal of the Slater Squad was to pick and coach young players from the age of nine or ten, instead of eleven and twelve as the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) did. The original intake for the squad were eight people between the ages of eight and eleven. In the squad, Henman worked on tennis three hours a day: two hours playing tennis and receiving advice from the personal coach, and the last hour on gymnastics and learning about the game. In contrast to popular belief, Henman was not considered the best of the bunch, and Sue Barker, the British 1976 French Open Women's champion, claimed that there was "nothing particularly special in his game in those days". She does note, however, that while Henman did not have the natural skills of a tennis player, he was "a hard worker". None of his fellow players in the Slater Squad saw Henman as a potential British Number 1, with most believing Marc Moreso to be the group's brightest hope. Not long after becoming a member of the Slater Squad, Henman was diagnosed with osteochondritis, a bone disease. He was unable to play tennis for six months, and it was two years before he could return to tournaments. Luckily for Henman, Slater kept funding him while he was recuperating, because of insistence from Lloyd who believed in Henman's tennis abilities.

He passed Reed School with 10 GCSE exams, but failed chemistry. As Henman notes in retrospect, "I passed the others with a few As, a few Bs and a few Cs. It was nothing dazzling by any means, but I got by." At the age of sixteen, Henman told his mother that it was impossible for him to retain his good grades while keeping up in the tennis world. In 1990 he dropped out of school altogether and focused on becoming a singles player, though Lloyd and the leadership of the Slater Squad had confidence in him as a doubles player, not singles. On the statistics that were available to them, Henman had managed to win five doubles tournaments but only two singles tournaments. But Henman disagreed with the Slater Squad leadership and began playing for the LTA in 1991. At the age of seventeen, Henman toured South America for eight weeks.