WIMBLEDON — Henry Searle won the Wimbledon boys’ title in summer 2023. This year, he wants to prove he is man enough to challenge at the highest level.
A win in his first-ever senior grand slam on Tuesday would jump the 18-year-old from 539 in the world to inside the top 300, far exceeding the goal he and his coach set for the end of the year, but delivering on high expectations that those in the know have for him.
It was only 12 months ago that Searle was creating his first piece of history, beating Yaroslav Demin to become the first British player to win the Wimbledon boys’ in 61 years.
Stanley Matthews Jr, son of the legendary footballer Stanley Sr, had been the last to do it and not many had expected Searle, a huge Wolves fan, to follow in such prestigious footsteps – although his coach Morgan Phillips said he had an inkling.
“When we went to the French Open in 2023, I started to notice a real shift probably a week or two before that,” Phillips tells i.
“His level just started to come together a little bit more, probably a bit more coordinated with his own body and at Roland Garros, that’s when I started to think, ‘Okay, we’ve got something here, there’s something we can really be excited about from a base level and as a competitor as well’.”
Searle reached the quarter-finals on the Parisian clay, losing to eventual champion Dino Prizmic, the Croatian who gave Novak Djokovic a scare at the Australian Open a few months later. But even that juniors match at Roland Garros, Phillips says he told Searle, would not have looked out of place in a professional tournament.
“That was when really it stood out to me that this boy has got something because that match had everything required to be a tennis player,” Phillips adds.
“So that gave me confidence, that gave me a lot of confidence. Of course, it didn’t make me think, ‘Okay, yeah, we’re gonna go and win Wimbledon now’. But I knew it put him in a good position to challenge and put in performances and potentially get results.”
In fact it gave Phillips such confidence that he quit his full-time job as head of boys’ tennis at the national academy in Loughborough to go on tour with Searle. It is a big endorsement.
“I enjoy the job there and it’s a big project and it gives you certain stability but at the same time, Henry’s work ethic, his potential, his attitude towards being a tennis player, for me, is up there,” Phillips says.
“I’ve worked with quite a few players transitioning from juniors to men’s and it’s not an easy process. But I think Henry’s ready for that.”
There is no doubting his competitive spirit. He and Phillips are regular golf partners, both playing off a handicap of 10 and both strugglers with the putter. Golf, like tennis, is a sport that takes time, patience and resilience, something Searle’s coach is keen to instil in him over the coming weeks, months and years.
“We want immediate results, but also within that we want to be building a real beast that can cope with the demands of men’s tennis and five sets of tennis and a long, long season,” Phillips explains.
Some of that building has been done with Steve Kotze, the fitness coach of choice for many a British player over the years, including Andy Murray, and most recently Jack Draper. Searle and Draper have done sessions together, but having a team-mate there with him has done little to dilute the intensity of Kotze’s work.
“They’re pretty tough,” Searle tells i. “I give it my all in those sessions, and sometimes he still wants a little bit more!
“He’s good fun and pushes me hard and tries to get me in the best physical shape as as we can. And it’s working.”
It’s hard to argue against that when you look at Searle, who at 6ft 4in looks as much of a man as anyone on the senior tour and has already shown he can win matches at a much higher level than the Futures tournaments he most often frequents at present. In Nottingham this summer, an ATP 250 event, he won two matches in qualifying and then another in main draw before losing a close match to Dan Evans.
Even that was a clash, decided in two tie-breaks, that Searle might have won, had he not netted a simple smash on break point in the middle of the second set. The frustration of the miss got to him and Evans, twice his age, was too experienced to let him get away with the loss of concentration.
The former British No 1 though rates his game highly and will play doubles with him here at Wimbledon.
“He came to Davis Cup in Manchester [last September] for a few days at the end of the week,” Evans revealed.
“It’s pretty self-explanatory his game. Big lefty serve, a pretty good backhand and the forehand does the damage.”
Like Phillips, Evans sees the possible high ceiling in the teenager’s game.
“Me personally, I’d like to see him come in [to the net] a bit more,” added Evans, who has also spoken of his aspirations as a coach one day.
“I think that could be something he could do a bit more and put a bit more pressure on, rather than hanging back. He’s a big guy with good levers and great volleys. So when he did come in, he had good success.”
He will need every inch of those long levers in his first round against Marcus Giron, the 30-year-old American who took fellow rangy, left-handed Briton Draper to five sets in Australia this year.
But no one doubts that if any 18-year-old can, Searle can.
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