• Wimbledon

Murray better than I was - Henman

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Tim Henman has revealed that he considers world No. 4 Andy Murray to be a better player than he ever was as the Scot prepares to end Britain's 74-year wait for home success at the All England Club.

The 35-year-old, who retired from competitive tennis in 2007, reached four Wimbledon semi-finals and won 11 singles titles during a hugely successful 14-year career but the former British No. 1 feels Murray has the ability to claim the one major omission from his own list of honours - a Grand Slam title.

"He's a better player than I ever was," Henman said. "I think he will win Grand Slams because he's that good.

"Of course he can win Wimbledon. It's not going to be easy because, like [Pete] Sampras and [Roger] Federer overlapped in my generation, he's got Federer and [Rafael] Nadal, two of the best players who ever played the game.

"He's a good friend of mine and he knows I'm always here for him. But he's been No. 2 in the world, been in Grand Slam finals and won three Masters series, so he's doing pretty well on his own."

The current British No. 1's preparations for Wimbledon have been far from ideal but Henman believes the 23-year-old will have no problems in overcoming the disappointment of failing to defend his Queen's title.

"I honestly don't think any of that will have a bearing on what he achieves over the coming fortnight," he said."There were occasions when I lost my first match at Queen's but went deep into the second week of Wimbledon, and others when I did well at Queen's but struggled at Wimbledon."

Henman recently hit out at the lack of British players in the main draw for this year's grass-court showpiece and the former Davis Cup player feels that the system of developing talented young tennis players needs revising in order to produce more home-grown players with the ability of Murray.

"This year we have the fewest number of male British players ever and that's disappointing," Henman added. "We've got the biggest and best tournament in the world but only one guy getting in on his ranking and with the money that we are investing it's not good enough.

"We've got to go back to grass roots, the seven, eight, nine-year-olds, in all areas of the country. We've got to get those talented sports people with the desire and the hunger to make something happen, then you need to give them a path to follow, give them the opportunity, the facilities and the coaching to develop.

"There's no magic secret, I've been through that journey and there's a lot of hard work that goes into it.

"We've got world class sportsmen in other sports, but in tennis we are not utilising the talent we've got."

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