Tiger Tim roars in Hamburg

At the end of the match, he refused to shake umpire Fergus Murphy's hand, kicked a ballboy's kneepad and failed to acknowledge the mere existence of the German crowd as he walked sulking off court.

Anyone that has watched Tim Henman for a substantial amount of time will know that this is not the type of behaviour the man is associated with. A win over fellow compatriot Greg Rusedski in the previous round and occasional flashes of brilliance on the clay had put him in with a chance of reaching the quarter-finals. As it turned out, he would have had a good chance of going all the way, with Gaudio and Grosjean both in his half of the draw, going down on Thursday to lesser opponents.

However, an umpiring error, when the ball clearly made a mark on the court, ripped the match from his grasp, and could in turn have a knock-on effect on his Wimbledon ranking. With Chela serving at 4-4 in the second set at break point down, the Brit was arguably one shot away from the quarter-finals. Henman called Murphy over to check the mark made by a Chela second serve which television replays showed had clearly landed long. Inexplicably however, the Irish official pointed to a completely different mark and judged it to be touching the line. An ace and the point to Chela. Henman lost his cool, immediately dropped his serve in the next game, lost the set and fell apart in the final set.

"On clay, there's an art which some umpires have to picking up the marks. It seems that he hasn't got it," said Henman.

"Two points before, when Chela hit another second serve there, I asked which mark it was and the umpire said it was one that was clearly on the line."

"I said: "Fine, I got that wrong. He serves again to around the same spot. The umpire comes out of his chair and points to the mark he had just been talking about.

"I said: "What about the point two points before?" and he replied: "I'm only interested in this point."

"Whether it was in or out, I'm not sure and the marks weren't far apart, but he wasn't interested in the mark I was pointing to, only the one from two points before."

"When I look back on this match, my memory of it will be four-all, break point. I wouldn't say necessarily that I was robbed because I would still have had to serve the match out, but it was bad timing at such an important stage."

Were Henman to exit early at the French Open later this month and fail at Queen's Club, the Brit may find himself out of the top eight seedings for Wimbledon, and could mean he would face Federer as early as the fourth round. This is, of course, speculative. The Brit could make a repeat of last year's heroic run at the French Open. But to do that, he'll need to keep his cool and hope that Murphy's law is not against him.