TENNIS: Cue the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Élysées, a small glass of vin rouge and the pungent whiff of Gauloises outside a bustling pavement café. Images of Paris need to come flooding back into Tim Henman's mind tomorrow as he takes on Argentina's Guillermo Canas in the third round of the Australian Open.
It was in the French capital last autumn that he won his first major tournament, the Paris Indoor Open, playing the sort of confident, relaxed tennis that has so often eluded him in the slams.
This was not the style of tennis he played yesterday, save for the occasional cameo, as he defeated Radek Stepanek of the Czech Republic 6-2, 4-6, 6-3, 6-0 to reach the last 32 of the season's opening major. Melbourne has rarely bought out the best in him, the Rebound Ace courts being a touch too slow for his liking and the capricious wind rarely blowing him any good.
If Henman is finally to succeed here - and success would mean reaching his first slam quarter-final outside Wimbledon - then he must summon up all those memories of Paris when he posted successive wins over four of the world's top 20 players, including Roger Federer and Andy Roddick.
"If he can win in Paris then he can win here," said Federer yesterday after his own 6-2, 6-3, 6-4 victory over Jeff Morrison of the US. "He's dangerous for anybody."
Henman could meet the reigning Wimbledon champion in the quarter-finals, but such leaps of faith in the draw have been made previously in this city only for the British number one to fall flat on his face. Should he beat Canas, a second Argentinian may loom out of the sun, namely David Nalbandian, whom many are tipping for the title and who crushed the German qualifier Florian Mayer 6-1, 6-0, 6-3 yesterday.
Henman and Canas have met only four times but Canas holds a 3-1 advantage, including a straight-sets win in the first round of the 1999 US Open which must rank as one of Henman's worst grand slam displays. It was in the Louis Armstrong Stadium, and if Satchmo had been there he would have played the last post.
Twice in his career Canas has suffered severe wrist injuries, including last year, but he has top-20 pedigree and is a resilient competitor, as was highlighted by his 6-1, 4-6, 2-6, 7-6, 6-4 second-round win yesterday over his compatriot Agustin Calleri.
Despite good support from the crowd, Henman's performance against Stepanek was not convincing, with too many errors on the forehand creeping back into his play. He is also in an exceptionally tough section of the draw which, as well as Nalbandian and Federer, also includes Lleyton Hewitt, the former world number one, Wimbledon and US Open champion, who led Australia to their Davis Cup triumph here in the Rod Laver Arena last year.
Hewitt, though, was not at his imperious best yesterday, losing the opening set against Slovakia's immensely talented, yet totally unpredictable, Karol Kucera. Hewitt next plays the 17-year-old Spaniard Rafael Nadal.
With the exception of Pat Rafter's all-too-brief comeback - he and Joshua Eagle lost 6-2, 7-5 in the first-round doubles to South Africa's Jeff Coetzee and Chris Haggard - it was a good day for the Australians. Philippoussis won 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 against the unorthodox Fabrice Santoro of France - a player he described as "the kind of guy who can hit any shot because he's got two hands on both sides". Fortunately Santoro played with only one racket.
The other Australian winner was the 19-year-old Todd Reid, who defeated the vastly experienced Armenian Sargis Sargsian over five gruelling sets during which Reid, who now plays Federer, cramped and threw up most of the water he had imbibed.
Television replays were not for the squeamish.
