Sampras serves up a treat

Pete Sampras ran his fingers through his thick black hair and grinned. He could afford to having won 90 per cent of his first serves against Australian Scott Draper with just one swipe of his racquet. Draper managed a return rate of only 10 per cent of the champion's first serves but the crowd didn't mind.

To advance, Tim Henman did something similar to Frenchman Arnaud di Pasquale. Australian seventh seed Mark Philippousis did it before Henman against Xavier Malisse and all of them, along with Greg Rusedski, who also did it to Jason Stoltenberg, will desperately hope to do it for the entire two weeks.

Wimbledon crowds, despite the difficulty involved, have grown accustomed to becoming emotionally attached to the brutality of players serving at 145 mph on courts on which they have difficulty even holding their footing. Still, the number one seed and five-times winner Sampras took just an hour and a half to see off Draper on Centre Court.

By now it can be imagined that Sampras has grown accustomed to the sequence at Wimbledon. Arrive at the ground at the same time, practise at the same time, eat the same lunch at the same time and carry off the trophy. Then do it all over again the following year.

Yesterday was business as usual for the only man of the Open era to ever hold the number one position in tennis for six consecutive years. "You know as far as your first match out, you feel a bit vulnerable. I got the early round jitters," he said somewhat disconcertingly having polished off Draper 6-3, 6-4, 6-4. "First day on court is very green, very slippery compared to the outside courts. It's a little bit different. Unfortunately it makes it a bit dangerous, to be honest with you," he said.

As far as his exemplary service record went Sampras was unequivocal: "Sometimes I can do things like that here. It is not that complicated. But it is the scene; it is the court. When I come here, I always think this is it for me. That's not the way I felt 10 years ago. I was like a lot of players coming here on the grass. But now you can get into a certain rhythm, and I seemed to find it pretty quickly today.

"I know what to expect and I'm keyed up to handle it. I've grown to love it and one day when I make my last appearance here I'd just love to take away a little slab of that turf, but that won't be for quite a while yet."

Henman, of course, stands to explode the hopes of an entire nation. This year he is Britain's most "realistic" chance of winning the tournament. On the back of the European Championship and cricket World Cup, once again the great and gullible screamed him and Rusedski towards the Holy Grail. Sampras too has weighed in and has said that Henman may be his biggest hurdle. Some would say that Sampras is a chancer who knows how to soften opponents. But Henman's 6-4, 6-0, 36, 7-6 win over the Frenchman should blow away some of the nerves despite the fact he dropped the third set.

"It went pear-shaped pretty quickly, didn't it? I think I like putting myself, crowd, coach, family through pain when it comes to Wimbledon," he said. "I would have preferred to have gone through in straight sets. Let's not hide away from that fact. But I feel I've got involved in the tournament. I had to play when conditions were difficult. I was under pressure in that fourth set. But no, it's welcome to Wimbledon.

Once you get yourself in that awkward situation then you can make life very difficult and it was only five or 10 minutes' bad play at the end of the third set and all of a sudden it's two sets to one and you know, there was a bit of extra pressure on me."

Rusedski smiled his toothy smile when he dispatched Stoltenberg in straight sets. The problem with the biggest server at the tournament is that his perfect teeth have become a semaphore for "here's another cliche."

"Everything turned out for the best. Today I was very pleased with the way I played. I stayed very relaxed and very focused and let things happen," he said. "I just let my tennis do the talking for me out there and it turned out well," he added.

We watched the mphs build on the speedometer which the organisers have erected this year for the first time so that spectators can ooh and ahh at the ball's unwatchable speed. Tennis was whistling, not talking. Still the main body of seeds are still intact after day one with only Yevgeny Kafelnikov struggling against Magnus Larsson with the game not finished, but poised at 5-5 in the last set.