"It's got to be the most exciting sports arena in the world," says Stephen Nugent, expressing delight with his junior Wimbledon experience last week.

The precocious Malahide youngster was back in Ireland for the Irish Close championships at Donnybrook last evening and vows to return to the big stage as a senior player some day. "It's my greatest ambition just now, mixing with all those world players, it's simply a fantastic experience to play there, even at under-18 level. "My ranking will be between 50 and 60 as a result of what I achieved there, but I don't want to be thinking about rankings, I just want to play and see what emerges.

"My immediate aim is to play in the US juniors come September."

In Donnybrook last night Eoin Collins, who 15 years ago set a record by winning the championship title as a 15-year-old, could not make amends for a lack of match practice and went down to the impressive David Mullins. "I haven't played a competitive match since last September," said Collins, who now lives in the United States. Scott Barron, whose main task this week is to put his recovering shoulder injury to the test ahead of the Davis Cup tie with Denmark in a fortnight, advanced comfortably. "I am only hitting 50 per cent on my serve at this stage," Barron said afterwards. "I will be okay for the Davis Cup." Also through is the number two seed Owen Casey, as well as Robert Collins, George McGill and Nicholas Malone.

A somewhat rusty Marcelo Rios struggled to overcome Bohdan Ulihrach 6-2 6-7 7-6 in the first round of the Swiss Open yesterday. Out of action with a thigh injury since a quarter-final defeat by Dominik Hrbaty at the French Open five weeks ago, Rios began strongly, winning the first set. But the 23-year-old Chilean soon began to show the effects of the lay off as he struggled with the high altitude at this Swiss resort, losing a second set tie-break 9-7, before eventually winning the third set tie-break 7-1.