Tim Henman last night endured the fright of his tennis life before clawing his way to a marathon five-set victory over virtually unknown qualifier Jan Vacek at the US Open in Flushing Meadows.
The British number one was two sets up and apparently cruising to an easy first round victory over the 6ft 6ins Czech when his tennis game disintegrated in the most dramatic fashion.
He battled back bravely to survive in the tournament with a 6-3 6-2 6-7 3-6 6-3 triumph after a marathon match which lasted three hours and 52 minutes and included medical time-outs, a delay for a monsoon-type downpour and more twists and turns than the corridors of the subway in this "city that never sleeps".
Earlier in the evening, the women's top seed Martina Hingis overcame a brief glitch to beat Laura Granville, a 20-year-old American wild card, 6-2, 6-0 but the world number one had a harder time at the hands of the press afterwards.
Hingis was asked about controversial comments made earlier this year in Time magazine in which she said that the Williams sisters had an advantage because they were black and that people were wary of criticising them.
Hingis hesitated before apologising for the remarks. "I didn't mean to hurt anyone's feeling," she said. "It doesn't mean I'm against everybody. Maybe it was politically incorrect but I don't know all the rules here," she went on, stumblingly. But, when asked if players were afraid to criticise the Williams sisters, her verbal footwork was nimbler.
"Well, you always have to respect what they say. It doesn't matter what race they are, what colour they are," she said.
That triggered a query as to whether the Williams's race caused players to self-censor their criticisms. Hingis reckoned she had been served a fault and wisely turned to the WTA Tour communications manager Raquel Martin to steer the questions to safer topics.
Hingis had earlier dropped serve to allow Granville to go from 0-3 to 2-3 but thereafter the Swiss woman was characteristically too accurate and varied from the baseline for the top US college player, who had only just turned professional and was on a stadium court for the first time, but she will have to improve.
Hingis is in danger here of losing that top-ranking status to the reigning Australian and French Open champion Jennifer Capriati or possibly to Lindsay Davenport, 6-2, 6-3 victor over Germany's Andrea Glass.
In the men's competition, Patrick Rafter made a rousing start in what could be his last grand slam tournament when he played his classic serve-and-volley style to great effect in beating left-handed wildcard Bob Bryan 7-6, 6-3, 7-5.
