Andre Agassi saw off a the challenge of Britain's Jamie Delgado to get his campaign for a second Wimbledon title up and running today.
The 33-year-old world number one was given a useful workout before triumphing 6-4 6-0 5-7 6-4 against a man he had beaten in straight sets in the second round two years ago.
Since then Delgado has slumped to his current 456 in the world and enjoyed no main tour wins. But the 26-year-old from Maidenhead performed way above expectations and broke his illustrious opponent twice on his way to winning the third set.
However, Agassi is made of much sterner stuff than Lleyton Hewitt, who crashed to Ivo Karlovic on the same Centre Court yesterday and a break in the fifth game of the fourth set was enough for Agassi to wrap up victory.
Agassi, who has won four of the eight tour tournaments in which he has played this year, started off a stroll and scattered the baseline with ferocious ground-strokes as he stormed into a two-set lead.
Delgado's demise seemed to be hastened by regular treatment he received for a back injury during and immediately after the second set. But his meeting with the trainer seemed to work wonders as Delgado came out firing and passed Agassi with a couple of his own searing forehands.
And he took advantage of his second set point opportunity with a delicious lob which had his supporters in raptures.
Delgado forced him to serve out for the match and but there was nothing in Agassi's performance to unduly worry those who backed him to secure a second crown 11 years after his first.
Meanwhile, over on Court One Tim Henman progressed to the second round after fending off an ambush by the luckiest man in the tournament.
Henman beat Tomas Zib of the Czech Republic 6-2 7-6 3-6 6-1 but it was much tougher than most experts predicted.
Zib had never won a Grand Slam match. He had got into the tournament as a lucky loser from the qualifiers. He is ranked 154 in the world, 125 places below Henman.
Yet it did not look that way for huge swathes of a match, played in sparkling sunshine but in which Henman struggled to produce the form which has seen him contest four Wimbledon semi-finals.
His serve was tentative and he insisted on competing the majority of the points from the back of the court rather than impose his reputation as one of the world's best serve-volleyers.
His game will need to raise several notches if he is still to be around deep into the second week.