Murray Steps Into Picture

They don’t always do things quickly here, and if you’ve ever spent time taking part in the national sport, standing in an endless queue, it all starts to make sense.

So imagine the shock at Thursday’s stunning development at Wimbledon. It took only about two hours to find a new hero in the United Kingdom, probably a record. Tim Henman went out in the second round, at 4:47 p.m., exiting stage right on Centre Court. A little more than two hours later, Andrew Murray, an 18-year-old from Dunblane, Scotland, was exulting in the charged Court 1 atmosphere, waving his arms to keep the crowd cheering after a 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 victory against 14th-seeded Radek Stepanek of the Czech Republic.

Murray, a wild-card entrant who is ranked 312th, apparently felt it was his patriotic duty to keep something going after Henman’s five-set loss to Dmitry Tursunov of Russia. He noted in a TV interview, without his win, the papers would “give us a bit of a hassle.”

Murray has the blunt honesty of a Scot and a teenager. Stepanek annoyed him with some perceived gamesmanship late in the match, and Murray wasn’t afraid to say so in his news conference, blurting: “I don’t like him.”

In a BBC TV interview, he was shown footage of his mother, Judy, and Murray said, dryly, “You see by the celebration, of my mum, making an idiot of herself, look at that.”

And who else but a teenager would admit that he was reading a tabloid newspaper, the Sun. “I don’t actually have a girlfriend,” Murray said. “I read in the Sun today, I can’t even remember what it said, but basically that was my girlfriend two months ago, and she’s not anymore.”

There were certainly new candidates on the grounds. One girl held up a sign, “Will You Marry Me Andy” after his poised performance. Much has been expected of Murray since he won the U.S. Open junior singles title in September. The hype machine kicked into overdrive when he and partner David Sherwood won a Davis Cup doubles match against Israel in March.

That, of course, is nothing compared to Wimbledon. But even his biggest backers would not have expected the youngster playing in the third round against former Wimbledon finalist David Nalbandian of Argentina, a match probably headed for Centre Court.

Murray’s arrival couldn’t have come at a better time, coinciding neatly with the decline of Henman, who suffered his earliest loss at Wimbledon in a decade.

The oft-injured Tursunov, who splits his time between Roseville, Calif., and Palm Springs and works with coach Jose Higueras, kept his nerve under difficult conditions, defeating the sixth-seeded Henman, 3-6, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3, 8-6, in 3 hours 37 minutes, serving 20 aces.

Tursunov had broken a vertebrae in his back last summer in a boating accident and missed several months of play.

“A friend of mine misjudged the wake and landed pretty harsh,” Tursunov said, smiling. “What are friends for?”

He was asked plenty about Henman, who has never won a grass-court tournament and has struggled in 2005, failing to get past the quarterfinals in any event. At 30, Henman faced sharp questioning about his future and said he planned on continuing in his Wimbledon efforts.

“I would think about it if all of you who are ninth-best in the world and below quit with me,” Henman said. “But there wouldn’t be many of you left, would there?”

But Henman won’t be ninth in the world much longer, losing significant ground in the rankings because he reached the quarterfinals here last year. French Open champion and fourth-seeded Rafael Nadal of Spain won’t have that problem despite his second-round loss because he did not play here last year.

Gilles Muller of Luxembourg defeated Nadal, 6-4, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, preventing another meeting between teenagers Nadal and Richard Gasquet of France in the third round. Nadal defeated Gasquet in a much-hyped third-round match a few weeks ago at the French Open.

But this is grass and Nadal remains a work in progress, having played only six matches on the surface as a pro.

“I need [to] improve my serve,” Nadal said. “And I need [to] improve my confidence in grass because sometimes I [am] a little bit nervous when I serve because I know if I don’t win the game, I can lose the set.”

Sisters Venus and Serena Williams struggled at times but moved one step closer to a fourth-round meeting. The fourth-seeded Serena was pushed to a third set again, defeating qualifier Mara Santangelo of Italy, 2-6, 6-3, 6-2, and Venus beat Nicole Pratt of Australia, 7-5, 6-3. Afterward, Serena said she was playing through the pain of a slight fracture in her lower left leg.

Because of darkness, the match involving Andy Roddick and Daniele Bracciali of Italy will be carried over to today. Roddick won the first two sets against Bracciali and lost the third in tiebreaker. The Italian lost in qualifying, and got in the main draw as a lucky loser because of other withdrawals. He then survived 51 aces from Ivo Karlovic of Croatia in the first round, winning 12-10 in the fifth.