He saved a match point when 4-5 down in the third.Henman and Rusedski stressed how relaxed they are this week but both admit that should they meet in the final, there will be no holds barred. They have met twice before, with Henman beating Rusedski in three sets in the final here last year and then defeating him 7-6, 7-5 in the Czech Open in Ostrava last month.Rusedski said: “I’ve worked out a plan with my coach, Brian Teacher, on the best way of playing Tim but I’m saying nothing. If we do meet in the final you’ll have the chance to see if the plan works.”Henman insisted: “I would like to win the tournament again but I’m not losing any sleep over it. There has been healthy rivalry in my two previous meetings with Greg and he has not enjoyed losing.

But we still have to win another match before we can think about the final.”Henman and Jeremy Bates, the holders, were beaten 6-1, 6-3 in the semi- finals of the men’s doubles by Danny Sapsford of Surrey and Stoke’s Andrew Foster. The result means Bates, winner of the men’s singles six times and the doubles seven times, has played his last match in the championships as he insists this is his last appearance in the Nationals.The women’s singles final, to be played today, will be between two 21- year-old left-handers, Claire Taylor of Banbury and Julie Pullin from Sussex. Taylor will start as favourite after beating the defending champion, Clare Wood of Sussex, 4-6, 6-2, 7-5, but Pullin, who defeated Lucie Ahl of Devon, 6-1, 6-4, will not lack support of her own.Pullin had a comfortable victory, leading by a set and 5-1 before Ahl delayed the end by winning three successive games but Taylor might easily have lost. Wood, who has won the title three times, led 5-3 in the final set and served for the match at 5-4.

But Taylor rose to the occasion, breaking Wood to love for 5-5 and then taking the next two games to 30.. The moment: The British are anally retentive obsessives: that’s why they are so easily hooked by crazes. So when Erno Rubik invented a cube with 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible combinations and only one solution, the public was eager to buy this deceptively simple, brightly coloured, child’s toy. Background: Not content with exporting goulash and Gypsies, Hungary was also responsible for Rubik’s cube.

In the late Seventies a German mathematician told the veteran puzzle manufacturer, Pentagle, about a new puzzle designed by Dr Rubik, a teacher in the University in Budapest. When the lecturer found that none of his students was able to create a 3D design that could rotate in any direction, he did it himself and patented the idea. Pentagle had discovered, in a crude form, the prototype from which a puzzle would emerge which would occupy a special place in the British psyche for many years. The Germans at first snubbed the creation; so too did the British puzzle-buying public. But then the leader of fashion, Noel Edmonds, spoke; and the masses obeyed.

For three weeks running the cube featured on his Multi-Coloured Swapshop on Saturday mornings, and sales soared.
The effect: The puzzle peaked in popularity in the early Eighties. 15 million were sold, and it was estimated that three out of four households had a Rubik Cube buried in the sock drawer. In spite of an initial lack of interest the world over (including Hungary) the Rubik cube suddenly became hugely successful in everywhere.Only a very small number of people managed to solve the puzzle of their own volition; some boasted their logical prowess in public and then sneaked away to look up the solution in one of the many books; others cheated by breaking the cube up and reassembling it.Moments of subsequence: Though immensely successful, once solved a Rubik cube did not have many other uses, and in 1983 the market for the multicoloured mind game suddenly disappeared There was however a vast market for spin- off products. The cube bred many-sided variants: a company in Hong Kong looked at every mathematical shape and did a Rubik-type dissection of them.