Tennis/ Wimbledon Championships: In March of last year the 14-year-old Sesil Karatantcheva was scheduled to play an exhibition match with Maria Sharapova. Both players are graduates of the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Florida. Sharapova didn't turn up and the younger player threw a hissy fit.

"She's not charming, she's not charming, she's not charming," yakked Karatantcheva. "I'm gonna kick her ass off."

Yesterday the young Bulgarian got her chance in a match that lasted 46 minutes. The 18-year-old reigning champion allowed her 15-year-old opponent just one game in that time. When she finally did win the game late in the second set Karatantcheva covered her mouth as a fit of the giggles took grip and the crowd in Court One rose and cheered. It had taken her 39 minutes.

Karatantcheva was the player who had humbled Venus Williams in the third round of the French Open for the best win of her growing career, but yesterday Sharapova showed the sort of aggressive play that earned her the title last year when she played Serena Williams in the final.

Nothing was missed from the Russian's side as Karatantcheva sprayed balls everywhere, sometimes three, four, five feet past the baseline. A return in the final game ended four rows into the spectators.

The adolescent, though ranked 52nd in the world, was simply way out of her depth and Sharapova outpowered her, was more accurate and maintained a high tempo for the entire match.

When it was all over, the winner was asked if she had spoken to her opponent in the locker-room given what Karatantcheva had said about her last year.

"No," said Sharapova. "We're in different locker-rooms because I'm in the members' locker-room. Sorry, I'm not trying to brag. That's a fact."

Nor did Sharapova allow herself to feel sorry for the hapless Karatantcheva, who was making her Wimbledon debut. When you've been packed off as a child to Florida from Ukraine to play your way to the top of the game, you find little room for sentimentality.

"It's hard to feel sorry for your opponents," she replied. "Unfortunately this is an individual sport."

Venus Williams would agree with Sharapova. In her heyday, she would have easily tidied up yesterday's match in a little over 30 minutes without a second thought for the mental state of her opponent. Yesterday, the 25-year-old came through but not in the same way as the Williams of 2000 and 2001, when she was winning successive titles here.

Struggling in the first set against the 32-year-old Australian Nicole Pratt, she took 52 minutes to scramble a game for 7-5 before finally controlling the match for a 6-3 second set.

The reality is, however, that Pratt earned nine break points on Williams's serve but was able to convert only one of them, while Williams earned six and converted three. No doubt the performance will be seen as a first-week effort, not good enough for week two but adequate for now.

The younger Williams, Serena, will be thinking the same. Struggling even more dramatically against the Italian qualifier Mara Santangelo, the fourth seed and last year's beaten finalist dropped the first set 2-6 as she failed to find rhythm or accuracy.

For a while it looked so bad there were suspicions she might not pull out of the tailspin. But as usual with the six-times Grand Slam champion, she staged an unstoppable comeback, taking the second set 6-3 and the third 6-2.

She will have left the stadium yesterday evening with the last set in her mind, certainly not the first.