The queens, the princesses and the high priestesses of world tennis graced the sun-kissed lawns for the first time yesterday. Amelie Mauresmo, the world number one, Venus Williams, the defending Wimbledon champion, and Maria Sharapova, the only player in the world to break the Williams sisters' hegemony of Wimbledon championship wins in the 21st century, came and left.

For those who like their matches well done by arriving a little late, well they would have missed most of all three matches as the top seeds demolished their first-round opponents with, it must be said, the style and grace that befit royal blood.

But many of the paying subjects were not amused.

Williams dropped just one game against American Bethanie Mattek over 51 minutes. Sharapova dropped two games against Israel's Anna Smashnova in a 52-minute romp. And top seed Mauresmo conceded nothing out on the graveyard court to the 192-ranked qualifier, Ivana Abramovic, in a match that lasted just 39 minutes.

In total, that short blizzard of the divas at work lasted two hours and 22 minutes.

Compared to Andy Roddick's four-set match against Serbia's Janko Tipsarevic yesterday, which continued for two hours and 53 minutes, the brevity of the women's matches brought the whole issue of equal pay bubbling to the surface once again.

This year the men's singles champion receives £655,000 while the women's winner takes away £625,000.

It is the All England Lawn Tennis Club, which runs the competition at Wimbledon, that decides the prize fund, and as everyone at the championships now knows, Wimbledon is the only one of the four Grand Slam events that pays unequally.

That question of equal reward, which was inevitably highlighted by the brevity of those three top matches, was put to each player when she was whisked in for interviews.

Glowing a little but hardly perspiring, the players were also asked to explain how three of the best females in the world can polish off opponents in a combined time shorter that it takes Roddick to play an average-length first-round match.

In London, even the politicians are all over this one, their willingness to poke a finger into a sore for the sake of a no-brainer soundbite bringing them into all sorts of voter hideouts.

Prime minister Tony Blair is, unless you live east of Turkey, big into equality for all and yesterday joined the call for women to receive the same prize-money at Wimbledon as men.

That, coming as it did from such a lofty height, made last year's winner, Williams, very happy indeed.

"I just heard that," she said after her traditional, if shorter than usual, Centre Court opening.

"It's very exciting. It's really very exciting because this is something I personally feel very strongly about, that the women players feel very strongly about. We've all worked very, very hard to be on the same page with this one.

"So the fact that Mr Blair finds this cause extremely important really gives credence to the free world, that this is something that really makes sense and is something that needs to be done."

That winning easily has nothing to do with equal pay is Williams's free-world view.

And yet cheap points are always welcome. "I like winning easy," she added. "It means I've played very well."

Sharapova, who is willing to answer any sort of stressful question with an evil stare and a snort and far exceeds the placid Williams in her ability to be dismissive of queries she feels belittle her, supported equality but with a little less gravity than the American.

"Um, this is only the first round," said Sharapova. "I mean this is grass. If you have a player that loves to run around the baseline and hit high balls over the net, you're not going to see a very long match.

"My say is that of course - I mean, it would be kind of stupid of me to say I don't want equal prize money."

The 21-year-old Mattek, who arrived to play Williams in shorts, knee socks and a broad bandana holding up a cone of yellow hair, with earrings that reached her shoulders and a John Wayne walk, made the point that women's tennis now has become married to fashion and entertainment and the game is more than the scoreline.

The Floridian, whose eye-catching garb might be described as "Miami mall trash chic", made her point well.

"I think tennis is a form of entertainment. I'm out there playing so that people can come along and watch. Otherwise I'd be hitting a little yellow ball for my own enjoyment."

Before Mattek, ranked 103 in the world, walked onto court she was handed a couple of sponsor patches and paid "a grand" for each one. Afterwards she was asked what she would have to do for "five grand".

"It depends," said the 21-year-old cheerfully. "Maybe if I wasn't wearing a bra or something, then it would have gone up to five grand. Definitely would have gotten a picture there."

See where this is going?