Steffi Graf hit the comeback trail yesterday - and for almost an hour it looked as if she was going to hit the buffers as well. After four days under an umbrella or practising indoor since her arrival in Birmingham on Sunday, the seven-times Wimbledon champion went down 5-7 in the opening set of her first-round match against the game Australian qualifier, Rennae Stubbs in the DFS Classic at Edgbaston.
However, Graf then took command and closed down the match 6-2, 6-4.
Graf will be 29 on Sunday and, however uneasy she might have looked yesterday in her first serious match for a long time, there is obviously no immediate intention to abdicate her monarchy.
Afterwards she was all smiles, mixing her generally happy demeanour with a few rueful asides: "After that first set anything might have happened; I just couldn't find any rhythm at all. But it did me good. We had some great rallies. Rennae is my best friend on the circuit so we had fun as well. But the ball just didn't bounce. It sure made me bend my knee.
"The target I set myself throughout the year was to play Wimbledon. I need many more matches under my belt. From Birmingham I go to Eastbourne: everything is geared to getting to Wimbledon."
Her buddy Stubbs, from Sydney, was also making a comeback after injury last year and had to qualify. "Steffi for Wimbledon again? Once she gets a couple of good matches under her belt there, who knows? She is capable of anything."
As well as a recent hamstring injury, the latest chart-topper in Graf's doctor's log was the knee damage and yesterday she trod gingerly on the sodden court.
The skies had at last relented and the pewtery clouds rolled down towards the Cotswolds to reveal a blustery late afternoon blessed with bright sunlight.
The service toss of the German is still the highest of them all, and yesterday's winds aggravated the general insecurities of the former champion. But she dug out the skidders with a will and, often, a smile. In the two hours she was on court she faced, and survived, enough Edgbaston shooters and daisy-cutters to make the England batsman Nasser Hussain blow a fuse-box of rages.
Because of her inactivity - she has played only two tournaments in the past 52 weeks - Graf has fallen off the WTA tour computer rankings for the first time since she arrived in October 1982.
Graf was 15 when she first played doubles here in 1984, and watching her then as she precociously raced between the tramlines like a playful puppy and hit whizzbang winners made one wonder if she would be able to maintain that voracious relish.
Now we know she has - despite being a dollar millionairess many times over, despite the long log of debilitating injuries and despite personal problems relating to her father Peter in the early Nineties which led to his imprisonment for tax offences.
The first memory of the bounding teenage prodigy was of her boisterous speed, and that all-court quality remains fundamental to the Graf phenomenon. Not that there was much skipping about at full pelt yesterday. But she is back, smile in place and thumping ground-strokes as well.
She is not going to retire to spend more time with her dogs and classic collection of modern art. Certainly she could have curtseyed off the stage on a high the last time we saw her in the 1996 Wimbledon. After it she went on to New York to win her 21st Grand Slam title - three behind Margaret Smith's 24, gained in less competitive times, but ahead of Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert (18 each) and the legendary Helen Wills Moody's 19.
She is back once more for further challenges - between sheltering from the English rain in June, that is.
