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Henman rules out Davis Cup captain role

Working on his golf handicap is Tim Henman's priority at the moment © Getty Images

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Tim Henman has ruled himself out of the running to replace John Lloyd as Britain's next Davis Cup captain.

Lloyd's tenure is in the balance after defeat to Lithuania, the fifth on the spin under his stewardship, left Britain facing a play-off with Turkey to avoid slipping into the Euro/Africa Zone 3 - the bottom rung of world tennis.

There have been calls for Lloyd to fall on his sword and two of the biggest names of recent years in British tennis have been put forward as potential captains. Boris Becker has made it clear that Henman should be handed the job, while Greg Rusedski is in the frame, but Henman has ruled himself out of the running despite stating that the state of British tennis is 'unacceptable'.

"Maybe in three years, or in 13 years, sometime in the future, I might be interested in being the Davis Cup captain, but it doesn't feel like the right time," Henman told the Daily Telegraph. "I'm enjoying my family and my golf, and not having any structure to my life.

''For 28 years of the first 33 years of my life, tennis was what I did, and I wouldn't change that. I'm sure, at some stage, I'm going to get more involved and give back to British tennis but at the moment I wouldn't want the commitment or the responsibility of being the Davis Cup captain."

It is clear that the former British No. 1 feels the vast sums of money that are being poured into the game in this country are not being used effectively.

"To be in the position we're in, that's unacceptable," he said. "It was in 1992 that I came out of the juniors, and almost every year since then the LTA have received at least £25 million from the Wimbledon surplus, and still there's no depth at all in the men's game.

"I think John and Paul are easy targets after what happened in Lithuania, and it's easy to criticise them. They can only work with the players that are available. It would be easy to say that you can fix the whole thing by replacing John as the captain, and getting rid of Paul as the coach, but what would a new captain do differently?

''You're still going to have the same players. A coach or a captain is only as good as the players he has, and we need to produce better players. This issue runs much deeper than a defeat against Lithuania."

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