Martin Lee has carried on from where he left off at Wimbledon with a victory over a player inside the top 100.

The 23-year-old from East Preston overcame German Lars Burgsmuller 6-3 6-2 in the Hall of Fame event in Newport, Rhode Island, in the United States.

The victory over Burgs-muller, world ranked 65 and fifth seed, followed his triumph over Gianluca Pozzi, 77 in the list, which earned Lee a Centre Court showdown with Tim Henman.

The British No.3, who stands at 130, is delighted to maintain his progress.

He said: "I have no fear of these sort of players now. I can cope. I'm now beating guys on grass I should beat.

"It's all part of the work, particularly with sports psychologist Gloria Budd, bearing fruit.

"Coming to America and consolidating what I did at Wimbledon means that I am making a significant break through."

His Centre Court debut at the Championships provided the former world No.1 junior with more career-building ex-perience, despite losing 6-2 6-3 6-4 to the sixth seed.

He said: "I learned plenty just from playing on the court for the first time. I even managed to break Tim's serve in the third set so that's another little milestone. It all helps to build your confidence when you can cope with an occasion like that enough to do that."

It was, of course, an experience for his parents Brian, a tennis coach at Lee's Angmering club, and Barbara sitting in the guest box.

Brian said: "We were on edge because Martin was on a hiding to nothing because the crowd wanted Tim to win Wimbledon but felt a bit awkward because he was playing another Brit. It was daunting and Barbara and I couldn't relax. It was a case of would he make a fool of himself or not and he certainly didn't."

Alongside them was Lee's sports psychologist Gloria Budd.

Brian said: "Gloria has made a positive difference to Martin and he received some backing from Litigation Protection Ltd of Arundel that helped as he doesn't earn that much on the tour.

"A lot of people have been talking about how Gloria helped Barry Cowan take Pete Sampras to five sets, including Barry. But it was Martin who first started using her and then the others have followed suit. It seems to be making a difference to them."

John McEnroe, the three-times champion commentating for BBC TV, passed comment about the Lee family's pride and joy. Brian said: "His comments were constructive and destructive. I don't want to go into the destructive side, but his constructive comments were when he said he was overawed and needed to relax more."

Meanwhile, Lee received praise from Patrice Hagelauer, the LTA performance director.

Hagelauer said: "I want to get more youngsters playing tennis and, although Tim Henman making the semi-finals of Wimbledon was a huge boost, the fact Martin made some progress is encouraging too because youngsters will have watched and will be starting to dream of playing at Wimbledon like him."

Hagelauer's Club Vision to encourage juniors by running programmes and making the sport affordable to them, has had a "reasonable" response in the county, according to the Sussex LTA.

But Hagelauer, who turned France into a Davis Cup-winning nation with plenty of world class players, still needs to be convinced clubs across the nation are taking his initiative seriously enough.

He said: "Clubs must use what players like Martin, Barry Cowan, with that fantastic match against Pete Sampras, and, of course, Tim, did at Wimbledon and capitalise on it. That is the key issue because children identify with a hero and clubs must face up to the challenge.

"They need to make clubs accessible to the children and provide a competitive en-vironment. Most youngsters join clubs to play competitively and if they don't the youngsters will move on to football, cricket or any other sport and be lost to tennis.

"Countries like Spain, Sweden and my own, France, have built a competitive, affordable and accessible environment in clubs and have had a lot of success.

"We are starting to get some success, we won the European junior under-14 title recently, but it is only a beginning.

"There are 2,600 clubs in the country.

"We have 75 supporting us. I want to see at least 500 to 600. We need to lift the numbers.

"If there is not a good response the clear message from the country is: We don't care."