WIMBLEDON, England -- Before Henman Hill or Rusedski Ridge -- that's the now famous sloping ground inside the All England Club where raucous bleacher bums who don't have tickets to the showcourts watch and wail for their British heroes appearing on a giant TV screen -- completely morphs into Nalbandian Knoll or something, we should stop right here and examine what could happen next at this extremely weird and whacked-out Wimbledon.

	Henman Hill is the place to hang at Wimbledon if you haven't got Centre Court seats.

For one thing, David Nalbandian, the 20-year old Argentine who'd never seen a grass court before last week, will not actually get the thing named for him. Nor probably will Jan Vacek nor Mikhail Youzhny. Nor will Michel Kratochvil nor Feliciano Lopez. Nor even will Andre Sa -- which is not short for Saretta, who is the countryman he beat on Saturday, but the full name of a former three-year shooting guard at Bradenton (Fla.) Academy by way of Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

A Brazilian in the fourth round at the All England Club? Well, yeah, and so are all those other alphabet anonymitys. And (except for Nalbandian) every one is in the half of the draw that didn't, as they say, "open up" after Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi and Marat Safin and Bill Tilden and Don Budge and Jack Kramer and Stan Smith and Jimmy Connors were all beaten before anybody even unwrapped the strawberries and cream.

See, it's not merely that there ain't no more Americans left in the fourth round for the first time since 1922. (That's when the previous year's champion, Tilden, didn't bother to board the ship to defend his title.) There ain't nobody left from practically nowhere.

Reporter: "If they told you on the eve of Wimbledon, in order to get to the semifinal you had to beat Kratochvil, then Lopez or Sa, would you have signed (on)?"

Tim Henman: "Yeah."

Henman, 28, is the Great White Briton of Hope And Promise upon whose bony shoulders rests the dreams of a nation that has gone Route 66 since an Englishman last won here (Fred Perry in 1936). Henman was smiling at the question, knowing as well as anyone that most of these Round of 16 rounders have about as much chance of advancing as that statue of Perry, which greets visitors inside the main gates.

Going into the second week of Wimbledon, meanwhile, the whole of the British Isles are on cardiac alert at the prospect of Henman playing Greg Rusedski, 29, another Englishman -- well, R-Ski is really Canadian by birth (and when he loses, he's still Canadian) -- for the whole ball of wax a week from Sunday. As for the Hill/Ridge, if Brit plays Cana-Brit in the championship round -- the two players' careers are a mirror image and not just because they were both born on Sept. 6 and have wives named "Lucy" -- those noisy mountain maniacs in front of the outdoor TV screen might make the home country's soccer hooligans seem like the cast of Mary Poppins.

Rusedski's path to the semifinals is considerably tougher than Henman's inasmuch as first he faces the rejuvenated Johnny Depp lookalike winner from Belgium, Xavier Malisse -- previously known as Jennifer Capriati's boyfriend in that period when the X-man could hardly hit a ball in court. (Neither, of course, could Jen; it was some hot romance.) And then Rusedski would have to play the survivor of the formerly crippled but now back-to-boomtown servers Richard Krajicek and Mark Philippoussis.

		Know how everybody says: It's not rocket science? Well, Krajicek-Philippoussis will be. Lock up the women and children and do the same when Krajicek ... or Philippoussis ... or the left-handed Rusedski reaches the semis to face, almost surely, another southpaw, the dangerous floater, Wayne Arthurs.

Krajicek, the 6-foot-5 Dutchman who is the only defending champion left in the draw (1996), is coming off elbow surgery that restricted him to one doubles match on tour since November 2000. But as his 11-9-in-the-fifth-set victory over James Blake in the second round proved, "Crackerjack" can still bring serious heat. Philippoussis, meanwhile, might have won the Big W in '99. He had Sampras on the ropes here until shattering his knee in their quarterfinal match -- but he hasn't won anything since except the hearts of a slew of South Beach models. That is, until the swarthy Greco-Aussie moved away from Miami to save his body for other things. Like facing off in the kind of enormous-serving battle he'll engage with Krajicek on Monday.

Know how everybody says: It's not rocket science? Well, Krajicek-Philippoussis will be. Lock up the women and children and do the same when Krajicek ... or Philippoussis ... or the left-handed Rusedski reaches the semis to face, almost surely, another southpaw, the dangerous floater, Wayne Arthurs. In '99 Arthurs, another Aussie (from Adelaide) who now lives in Middlesex, England, won 111 consecutive service games here as he came through qualifying and all the way to the fourth round before being dropped by Agassi. This Wimbledon, obviously buoyed by noticing that his half was devoid of not only American legends (Sampras and Agassi) but Russian pseudo-legends (Safin and Yevgeny Kafelnikov), Arthurs has ramrodded his way to another 54 straight winning service games. The slim, 31-year-old veteran -- whom no less than John Newcombe has always said had the game to win Wimbledon -- now meets Nalbandian to meet the winner of claycourters Arnaud Clement-Nicholas Lapentti. Against these characters, Arthurs might as well be draining the Ho Chi Min City challenger.

In the top half of the draw, advancing to his now almost certain semifinal date with No. 1-ranked and top-seeded Lleyton Hewitt -- speaking of locks, the Kangaroo Kid meets Youzhny in round four to meet Sjeng Schalken in the quarterfinals -- Henman should pay considerable thanks to a chair umpire named Jorge Dias.

In the middle of Henman's 7-6 (6), 3-6, 7-6 (8), 6-1 third-round semi-thriller on Saturday against the experienced lawnsman from South Africa, Wayne Ferreira, the situation was this: Henman had overcome 0-3 and 4-6 deficits in the first set tiebreak, but Ferreira had tied the match and then taken control in the third-set breaker. He was ahead 4-1 and serving, when he shanked a forehand pass to the far corner that beat Henman and clearly caught the chalk. The ball was ruled good by the base linesman, but Henman turned and signaled it out to the chair -- whereupon Dias (from the other side of the court, mind you; NBC's Bud Collins later named him "Long Distance Dias") paused and then over-ruled the call.

After a short, incredibly gentlemanly protest by Ferreira -- the decision was so obviously wrong-headed and unfair that in the BBC studio John Lloyd, an Englishman, said if it had gone against him, he'd have "gone berserk -- and if it had gone against Tim, Henman probably would have gone berserk" -- the score read 4-2 instead of 5-1 for the South African. Though Ferreira seemed to shake off the slight, an obviously reinvigorated Henman went on to reach set point four times before winning the breaker -- which only meant Ferreira's spirit was obviously broken for the last set.

Even the denizens of the Royal Box -- which included such diverse royals as Kirsten Dunst, Retief Goosen and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa but did not include Chelsea Clinton, slumming in the paid seats -- knew a royal ripoff when they saw one. Even John McEnroe, also commenting for NBC, mumbled ... Wait, Johnny Mac, that notorious ump-baiter of old, mumbled basically squat. Good news, Tatum. Those alleged 'roids must finally be wearing off.

	Wayne Ferreira become the victim of a debatable over-rule from a familiar umpire.

Given the significance of the occasion -- both Henman and Ferreira seemed to realize the winner had a near walkover to the semis -- the ridiculous overrule brought comparisons to the occasions of some other horrendous officials' calls. Or lack thereof. The USSR-USA Olympic basketball final in 1972. Maradona's "Hand of God" goal in the World Cup of 1986. The Tom Brady "tuck rule" controversy in last season's Patriots-Raiders playoff game. Yeah, that's how terrible a hose job this thing was.

Afterward, Collins gave Ferreira a forum to complain.

Collins: "Is there a word in Afrikans for being screwed?

Ferreira: "I think I'll find one ... I think it's shocking. I mean, there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. But if he (Dias) had any decency, I think he would have at least come and apologized."

At the changeover, Ferreira asked Dias about the over-rule, "but he hemmed and hawed about it being close, touching the side, but maybe long. I mean he wasn't really sure. I think it was a total intimidation thing ... They're very good linesmen here. I have total trust in them. And I don't think umpires should over-rule when it's tight, when it's close."

As for Henman and his signaling: "I felt like ... I was obviously hoping the ball was out," said the winner. "By the time I'd looked at both line judges, and turned to (Dias), he'd already made his decision."

Henman's listeners were astonished to see that his nose somehow did not start lengthening. Instead, he was asked if both line judges called the ball good. "Well, if he (Dias) made the over-rule, they didn't call it."

Meaning they called it good, right, Tim, babe?

"I don't know. I mean, I'm much more interested in talking about the three sets I won."

Ferreira was asked if Henman could win the tournament without the umpire's help. "I think he got a little lucky," said the loser. "...What more can I say? I got screwed. But I mean, I'm not going to hold a grudge to the guy about it. He made a mistake."

Given the fact that Dias is the same fellow who made the same kind of "mistake" in an over-rule from long distance against Andy Roddick in the final game of his losing match against Hewitt at the U.S.Open last summer; the same guy that Jennifer Capriati has battled with in the Australian Open; the same guy in front of whom Goran Ivanisevic hurled his racket greens-ward in the Wimbledon final last year ... hey, let's either hang Dias from the Tower of London or send him to America to replace former umpire Eric Gregg at that beer stand in Philly.

Of course, on Sunday all of England wanted to erect a statue to Happy Jorge.

Or re-name that noisy spectator slope: Jorge Long Distance Dias Dune.

Curry Kirkpatrick is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at curry.kirkpatrick@espnmag.com.