DAY ONE and there's already a few people around. SW19 who need putting in their place. From the guys in peaked caps on the gate to the television presenters everybody swaggers around the place like they are the stars of the show.

Even on court there are those, who haven't read the script. The tournament's extras, there to make the big names look good in the early rounds get above themselves and suddenly a prospective champion is at a loose end for a couple of weeks.

Take Doug Flach, for instance Everyone knew that he was just first round fodder for Andre Agassi. Certainly Agassi looked like he knew when he played his lowly ranked opponent off the court early on, but Flach didn't seem to have been let in on the plot.

In the second set Flach started to dictate the way the game was played and, as he began to push the crowd's favourite around, it quickly became apparent that Agassi was not in the mood for a scrap.

The game's great service returner conceded 22 aces, the game's great retriever repeatedly stood and watched as Flach known for the vulnerability of his forehand scored winner after winner with his weakest stroke.

Flach started to give his opponent some trouble from the start of the second set but Agassi's service remained dependable and even after levelling the match in a tie break the outsider's situation did not look all that promising. In the third Agassi looked finally to be back on track when he recovered from 3-0 down, after being broken twice, to 3-3 but a couple of games later, at 4-4, the former world number one squandered a great chance to move into the lead and suddenly the crowd began to sense an upset.

Victory, and the highest day of Flach's career, was finally completed 50 minutes later when the world number 281 capitalised on his second match point opportunity in another tie break. As the qualifier celebrated the former champ made his way, dejected, to the changing room, beaten 2-6, 7-6, 6-4, 7-6.

From there, unlike Paris where he disappeared after losing to Chris Woodruff in the second round, he emerged to face the press but, clearly upset after another disappointing performance, he struggled to explain what had taken place out on court number two.

His lack of preparation for the trip to London seemed one likely source of difficulty but, while he conceded that his poor form earlier in the year had left him dispirited, he argued that he had rarely gone out of his way to play long grass before Wimbledon.

I never really played a warmup, except one year for Wimbledon, and I didn't really like the way it felt," he explained. "And I think spending too much time on grass can be detrimental to my game as well." Well, a two and a half hour long Wimbledon may be just the trick then, eh.

If the 1992 champion had been the only seed to bite the dust in the men's event yesterday it would have been an eventful day but, by the time Agassi was struggling to come to terms with his own failure, Michael Chang, Jim Courier and 15th seed Arnaud Boetsch had already had ample opportunity to consider how to spend an unexpected couple of weeks of leisure time.

Like Agassi, Chang's year has involved one struggle after another and, like the third seed, his first round assignment involved a meeting with a player who had never beaten him before.

In fact, it was here in the first round two years ago that Alberto Costa first came up against the 1989 French Open champion and on that occasion, after making a bit of a battle of it in the first set, his challenge withered over the closing two sets.

In the meantime, however, the young Spaniard who celebrates his 21st birthday today, has steadily improved with wins over Courier and Thomas Muster last season helping him to the number 7 spot in the world.

On grass his progress has been less marked with that defeat in 1994 followed by another couple of losses in recent weeks and there was little to indicate that he had had a performance like yesterday's in him.

Admittedly he merely took his increasingly fine clay court game and applied it to grass but after losing the opening set when a poor 10 minute spell cost him four straight games, his pounding from the baseline began to expose cracks in Chang's armoury.

Changes inability to return his opponent's serve deep rarely, tempted the younger man in towards the net but it handed the initiative to the Spaniard who gradually edged his way into the driving seat.

On those occasions when Costa showed signs of weakness, the American tended to let him off the hook with an unforced error while the final real test of nerve for the man from Barcelona was simply bypassed when, at 4-5 and 15-30 down in the fourth set, Chang produced a couple of double faults to hand his opponent the early present of a place in the second round, 3-6, 7-6, 7-6, Courier, meanwhile, also went out in four sets to a lesser known player although he and Jonathan Stark know each other only too well from the practice courts. Stark beat Courier on one occasion when his friend was the world number one but yesterday's 6-1, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4 win was still a very pleasant surprise for a man who, like his rival, had been struggling recently to rediscover hi.a best form.

Here, though, he was confident from the outset, taking the game to Courier and outplaying him in just about every area. Late in the match Courier, who reached the final here in 1993, injured his leg and was forced to receive treatment after twisting awkwardly as he went for a shot. But, while he lost the fifth game of the set on the next point, his fate was already sealed and he conceded afterwards that he had simply, been beaten "by somebody who had played better out there."

Happiest of all, perhaps, after the day of upsets will be top seeds, Pete Sampras and Boris Becker, whose paths to the final now seem easier. Of the two, Becker looked particularly impressive in his opening tie against Jean-Philippe Fleurian from France, dropping only five games on his way to the last 64 of the event.

With Agassi and Courier both absent from his half of the competition he looks almost certain to go the distance over the next couple of weeks while defending champion Sampras, who took a while to settle in the early stages of a 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 win over Richey Reneberg, still looks well capable of stepping up a gear or two in the rounds to come.