Wimbledon Women's singles: Just minutes after the soil on Lleyton Hewitt's Wimbledon plot had been patted down and the mourners gone, his partner, Kim Clijsters, bounded onto Centre Court and cheerily went through the exotically named Rosanna Neffa-De Los Rios 6-0, 6-0.
While the defeated Paraguayan's name may twinkle like a bird of plumage or a Crufts winner, her game, unfortunately, was equally effective.
The 27-year-old from Asuncion hardly had a peep in at the match in which she was centrally involved.
Clijsters, who lost to her Belgian compatriot Justine Henin-Hardenne in the French Open final two weeks ago, was too physically strong and canny, not at all in the mood to entertain any thoughts that her scalp, like her boyfriend's, might end up hanging from the belt of a player ranked outside the top 100.
"You obviously weren't distracted by what happened before?" Clijsters was asked, referring to Hewitt's tournament burial. "No I wasn't," she smiled. "Did it give you any extra motivation?" "No, not more or not less than any other match in front of me," she said wisely.
Venus Williams, who allowed her first-round opponent, Stanislava Hrozenska, just two games in each set, mirrored the threatening start of Clijsters. Placed exactly 190 places above Hrozenska in the rankings, the American fourth seed took 53 minutes to wrap up a 6-2, 6-2 opener.
Williams, who has been troubled with a niggling abdominal muscle injury, which before Paris had prevented her from practising at a level sufficient to allow her win another Grand Slam, declared all was fine. Well, sort of.
"I don't think it affects my serve, no," she said. And that was as definitive as she would go. But the injury has hurt her efforts to usurp her sister Serena as a serial Grand Slam winner and world number one. The elder sister, who is based in Florida, did not practise on grass before arriving in London.
It is a typical family trait, and one that has allowed them dominate and shape the game, to assume that the ferocity and level of their tennis will overcome any of the idiosyncrasies of the unfamiliar grass. Of course it has worked, as the two have won the championship for the last three years, Serena last year and Venus in 2001 and 2000.
An American journalist then asked Venus if her "mojo" was working. "I don't know if I'd put it that way but I feel I'm playing a little bit better," she said before giving her longest and most detailed answer of the day to some villain who asked about her "striking outfit". You don't need to know."
Catwalk queen and ninth seed Daniela Hantuchova found herself 4-2 down in the first set of her opening game before finding her striking zone against France's Marion Bartoli.
The 20-year-old Slovakian, who reached the quarter-finals here in 2002 before losing to eventual champion Serena Williams, has not advanced further than the semi-finals in any tournament this year.
But her win was less stressful than that of fifth seed and former champion Lindsay Davenport, who needed a first set tie-break and a 7-5 second set win to take her past Australian Samantha Stosur and into the second round.
Like Williams, Davenport has been struggling with injury - to her right foot - and has been taking cortisone injections.
At the French open it hampered her movement. Yesterday the articulate Davenport did not present herself as a fully fit athlete.
