TENNIS:THE PURVEYORS of top-end glamour products and flimsy women's tennis attire will look back on this week and see it as one in which their stock price took a nose dive. The first inkling of their marketing disaster was the Russian revolution of Thursday, when third seed and former world number one Maria Sharapova was despatched by the unknown Alla Kudryavtseva.

Yesterday Wimbledon witnessed the cultural revolution when top seed and French Open champion Anna Ivanovic quickly followed her out when doubles specialist China's Jie Zheng was able to do in 72 minutes what Nathalie Dechy could not in three and a half hours in round two. That was take advantage of the highest ranked player in the world in the middle of a crisis, one who couldn't even rely on the most feared weapon on the circuit, her forehand.

Ivanovic was spared by the net against Dechy but it was positively cruel to her yesterday in the seismic 6-1, 6-4 defeat. The statuesque 20-year-old, more than seven inches taller than Zheng, was regularly adrift and looking around the most famous tennis stadium in the world in despair as shot after shot went inches and often feet wide of their intended target.

Ivanovic was also unable to set herself up low enough for Zheng's low flat balls. Anything that hopped up, she murdered but equally how to hit a winner of the skidding ball became a mystery.

"It's tough," said Ivanovic afterwards. "I look at it as a learning experience. She's a good player on grass. She stays very low. I'd a tough time adjusting to the ball and it was also a bit windy. I was trying to get under the ball and play with a lot of spin, but I had trouble with my timing and I had a lot of mishits as well."

In the face of that dissolution of the Serbian's game, Zheng, who won the doubles title here in 2006, borrowed from the philosophy of Kudryavtseva who had lost to Venus Williams last year and vowed to herself never again to go into a game passively against one of the game's big hitters.

She then stepped up two days ago and successfully went toe to toe with Sharapova. Now Zheng has further demonstrated that showing no respect for the top seeds and slugging like there is no tomorrow, especially in the first week, is as good a way as any to cause an upset.

Throughout Zheng was stingy with her errors, gathered herself well and showed characteristic cool on big points. Even when she was serving for the match at 5-4 up in the second set, she didn't waver.

Thoughts at that point focused on whether the Chinese player would, in the heat of the moment, dwell on the magnitude of the upset if she held her serve and allow anxiety to undo all of the industry of the previous hour.

However, it was Ivanovic who hit one cross court forehand over six feet wide of the side line before Zheng's final serve of the match was skied off the frame of Ivanovic's racquet and into the crowd. "I just tried my best. Keep going. Keep going," said Zheng, who became the first Asian player to beat a world number one in a Grand Slam event. "Before I didn't think I could win because she had a big serve and big forehand. I needed 100 per cent to play every point."

Doubtlessly this defeat will leave some scar tissue on the Ivanovic psyche. But the world number one for just a matter of weeks also had the difficult transition from the clay to grass to make in a short time and carry the weight of top rank with her.

"The last few days have been very emotional for me," said Ivanovic. "I tried to find my game and found I was struggling. Here everything happens so fast. She was hitting the ball flat and fast and I couldn't get into my game."

Ivanovic appears in the tour's new advertising campaign "Looking for a Hero". To her abhorrence she found a most unlikely one yesterday out on Court One.