Kratochvil loses thriller to Henman

Michel Kratochvil came close to beating local favourite Tim Henman Keystone

Switzerland's Michel Kratochvil has been eliminated in the fourth round at Wimbledon, despite a strong effort against the fourth seed, Tim Henman.

Kratochvil’s match in London had very little to do with his last encounter against Henman in Basel at the Swiss Indoors, when ill, he lost 6-0, 6-1. This time, it took the crowd favourite five sets and over four hours of play to overcome the Swiss.

Henman came in fact very close to losing to Kratochvil, who had never won a match at Wimbledon before this year. The Swiss player probably missed his chance of causing a major upset though by double-faulting 17 times and making 57 unforced errors.

From the start, Kratochvil put the pressure on the Englishman. He was in fact serving for the first set at 5-4 when he double-faulted three times before losing a tiebreaker.

Weakened adversary

In the second and third sets, the Swiss player took charge of the match, taking the second set tiebreak and the third set 6-4. Kratochvil did, however, take advantage of an interruption caused by rain, as he was 1-4 down at the time.

In the fourth set Henman looked listless at 1-2 down, but after receiving a dose of smelling salts and leg massages during three successive changeovers, the Englishman seemed to come to his senses and broke Kratochvil’s serve twice to take the set 6-3.

The Swiss didn’t give up and immediately broke Henman’s serve at the start of the fifth set to lead 2-0. However, that was to be the last gasp for Kratochvil, as the bookmakers’ odds-on favourite powered home, winning six games on the trot.

The Englishman later revealed he had battled with a stomach bug throughout the match, but he said he never considered pulling out in front of his home crowd.

“I just had to keep fighting, the adrenaline got going and I started to feel better,” he said.

swissinfo with agencies