Tim Henman is a failure. This must be rather disappointing for him, and for anyone else who might nurture ambitions to be within the top 10 in any field in the world.

We live in a winner takes all society. Henman’s loss of acclaim reflects his failure yet to bag a Wimbledon title–the only prize the British media (and public) care about. Unfortunately, the ancillary analysis of Henman’s inability to win this greatest of competitions ignores chance, and heaps on the hapless sportsman all sorts of hypothetical shortcomings. He is too middle class, too nice, lacks a killer instinct, and now he is too old.

Less than 12 months ago, a relatively unknown athletic failure Kelly Holmes won double gold in the Athens Olympics at 800m and 1500m. Even in the heyday of British middle distance running, this achievement eluded some of our greatest runners. Holmes career had been dogged by injury–a failure of sorts, normally caused by overtraining, although often seen as bad luck. She was 34. At 30, Henman is now written off, displaced by a new British hope, the 18-year-old injury-prone Murray.

Tennis provides for an interesting interaction of skill and chance. Henman’s best chance of winning Wimbledon came in 2001, when he was dismissed by Goran Ivanisevic in a rain interrupted match which all consider he would have won but for the elements allowing the Croat to recover. Ivanisevic was a professional write-off himself at 29, never having bagged a grand slam title, despite many semi-final and finals appearances. His presence in the 2001 tournament was appropriately enough with a wild card entrant, lacking sufficient tournament ranking to qualify. He was the only wild card entrant ever to win Wimbledon. Bad luck Tim.

That rain intervention, permitting Ivanisevic’s recovery, highlight’s an important but rarely observed phenomenon of the game. It is all about rest and recovery from both the psychological and physical stress of each point. Possibly most of the time on court is not actually playing. Each period of exertion is followed by a rest of varying degrees, the time defined in the rule book. There are rests between points, games, sets and the facility for “comfort” breaks and the attendance of physiotherapists. The athlete’s relative ability to use or forego these rest periods, because of underlying fitness, gamesmanship, or psychological management are the fundamental determinants of success. The body and mind that can recover quickest, assuming a fair matching of skill, will win.

So when one player is on top, and there is an interruption, it is not the same for both players in the cumulative sense.

All athletic performance is driven by the correct balance of exertion and recovery. Injury, whether physical or mental, occurs when there is insufficient recovery. The unrepaired body breaks. In this respect no performance improvement or achievement can be linear, but must be modulated by recovery and down-time. This is true in all walks of life, but seems least understood by those in the “measurement” professions.

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