The blood drained from his face as he smashed his racquet off the side of his foot. Tim Henman's final act at Wimbledon was a fitting image for his crushing disappointment of going down in five sets to Australia's Mark Philippoussis, having been two sets to one ahead.

Henman's frustration was also understandable. He faced the number 10 seed at 5-4 down in the fifth needing to break serve to hang in for a quarter-final place. Instead he had to swallow a first ace at 134 m.p.h.

Philippoussis then hit another and then a third before Henman finally got his racquet to a ball. The small act of defiance was rewarded in kind as Philippoussis, on his second serve, aced him for the 34th time and for the match (6-1, 5-7, 6-7, 6-3, 6-4).

It was brutal but in the end numbly painless. Henman too would have realised that he had lost the match long before that howitzer of a final game when the "Scud" Philippoussis became an obscenely appropriate nickname.

Having survived a marathon five-hour match against Sjeng Schalken on Saturday, there were questions whether the 23-year-old Australian's body would stand up to another five-set contest. Those questions seemed superfluous after Philippoussis lost just one game to a nervous Henman in the first set. But Henman recovered, and after both players had dropped their serves, he broke Philippoussis in the last game to take the second set 7-5.

Henman, playing a sound serve-volley game, broke back and took a tie break in the third to inch ahead, but the sheer volume and the robust nature of the Philippoussis game was simply overwhelming.

Henman was broken for 4-2 in the fourth, Philippoussis going on to hold serve for the set before a moment of fortune gave him the platform for the memorable finish.

At 3-3 and serving, Henman missed an easy volley to give Philippoussis three break points at 0-40. Henman clawed back two points but on the final break point Philippoussis mis-hit a backhand which looped over Henman and just kissed the baseline. From there on the Australian simply had to hold serve.

"It's safe to say that he wore me down with his serve," said Henman. "Frustrated as I am, I have to take my hat off and say `too good today'. He has a game that can cause a lot of people trouble. "The crucial seventh game (of the final set) is where the match was won for Mark. No question I've played worse and won. I missed that volley in the seventh. I should have got it.

"I was hoping for the pace to drop a little bit as he got tired. But the way he was able to keep finding the mark was too good. The tie break was highly important. But any glimmer of chances were just extinguished with big serves," he said.

Vladimir Voltchkov never belonged to a Country Club. His parents never tried to coach him. Up until now he has been hacking out a living on the Challenge Tour. His father worked in a motor car factory in Minsk, and Voltchkov learned his tennis on the factory tennis court. He prepared for the championships on synthetic grass in Belarus before advancing through the qualifying events and into the main draw. Now, after a 6-3, 6-2, 7-5 victory over Wayne Ferreira, only the unseeded Zimbabwean Byron Black stands between Voltchkov and a place in the semi-finals against either Pete Sampras or Jan-Michael Gambill.

"It's very difficult to speak of a system in Belarus. Unfortunately we don't have great tennis specialists there, like coaches, so you have to learn a lot of things yourself," said Voltchkov, who is now guaranteed £62,080 sterling, by far the biggest pay cheque of his career.

The furthest a qualifier has advanced in the Open era (which began in 1968) is the semi-finals, John McEnroe reaching that stage in 1977 before falling to Jimmy Connors in four sets.

Unseeded and virtually unknown, Alexander Popp tipped out Switzerland's Marc Rosset in five sets (6-1, 6-4, 3-6, 4-6, 6-1). Holding both a German and British passport, Popp becomes a convenient qualifier for Britain now that Greg Rusedski's career has nose-dived.

Gambill, a crowd pleaser and currently on the books of the Ford Model Agency, faces Pete Sampras with very little to lose.

Gambill beat Thomas Enqvist, the last seed in the top half of the draw, in five sets as Sampras capped his Centre Court performance to just three sets against Jonas Bjorkman, winning 6-3, 6-2, 7-5.

The Sampras injury is becoming a disconcerting distraction at this stage. Sampras suggested that some people in the locker room believe he is faking.

"I can tell the way Jonas shook my hand today that you know . . . they can believe or read what they want to read," he said.