TENNIS/Wimbledon championships: The Anatomy of a Wimbledon champion facing a wild card entry. Take one local player ranked 344 in the world. Call her "local hope Jane O'Donoghue".

Put her on Centre Court against the world number one Venus Williams. Tell her she has a chance. Advise to receive serve first. Wait. Ace. Unreturned serve. Unreturned serve. Unreturned serve. Game. At seven minutes 2-0; at nine minutes 3-0. Watch her win one game and exhort the home crowd to become more partisan with a fist-clenching movement.

Turn and face the wild card towards Williams and watch the reigning champion plant a first 110 m.p.h. serve into her midriff before going 4-1 ahead. Then 5-1 and after 21 minutes watch her close out the set 6-1.

Repeat for a second time and go through to round two, 6-1, 6-1.

Williams lost only one point on serve in the first set and sent O'Donoghue packing back to Wigan, most probably still recovering from the recoil of the points she actually got a racquet to.

Asked when she first sensed it might be difficult, the 19-year-old replied. "I thought I'd make her serve first and put a bit of pressure on. She came out and nearly did four aces. Then I realised, 'I've got a mountain to climb here'."

To her credit, the Will Young fan (remember Pop Idols?) played aggressively and stuck to a game plan and in the rallies she had Williams moving.

But how do you generate exchanges from the photographer's pit, or backing off with the racquet around your chest?

Williams' next opponent will be the unseeded Spaniard Virginia Ruano Pascual, last year's conqueror of Martina Hingis.

At least Pascual now knows that plucky aggression and a Young remix - Come On Baby Light My Fire - attitude isn't enough against a player who can make 82 per cent of her serves unreturnable.

Belgian Kim Clijsters - her father Leo was a top international soccer player and Belgium's player of the year in 1988 - had a stuttering first round 6-2, 7-6, win over America's Samantha Reeves.

Clijsters is always a banker in interviews for her easygoing intelligence on a circuit not renowned for such traits.

Struggling with an arm injury this year and scheduled to have an MRI scan after the tournament, last year's quarter-finalist is one famous Belgian overshadowed by another, her dad. But it has worked for her.

"It (father's fame) has definitely helped me a lot because he's been in the soccer world.

"My parents have never, ever put pressure on me about playing tennis. They said, 'If you don't want to play tennis and want to do swimming . . . you can do whatever you want'."

Clijsters was joined in the next round by her compatriot, 20-year-old Justin Henin, last year's defeated finalist. Henin, who had taken a two-week break from the game as part of her build-up to the tournament following the French Open, found some difficulty in closing out the game against American Brie Rippner, which she should have dominated more easily.

Opening 6-2 before dropping the second set to a tie-break, Henin finally made her statement of intent by closing the match 6-1.

"You know the tennis world is many things," said the young sage when enticed to comment on some players' ability to earn infinitely more money even though they are infinitely lower in the rankings than her. "I don't mind what other players earn. That's not my problem.

"Every player lives a life like she wants. I try to give a hundred per cent for tennis."

So too does Monica Seles, the fourth seed, who offered up what the Americans quaintly call a double bagel. Spain's Eva Bes suffered the 6-0, 6-0 rout on her least favourite surface.

Seles (28), suffering from an infection which she picked up in Paris, but struggling to find the correct cocktail of drugs that would satisfy International Olympic Committee rules, still belives a Grand Slam is within grasp.

"That's one thing that gives me that drive. Realistically this is the tournament I have the least chance (of winning). Movement is not the strength of my game."

Seles is one of the top four seeds, who are all American. It would have been five for five had Lindsay Davenport not been injured, while Switzerland's Hingis is also unfit. It was a cue for Seles to put her oar into the issue of the tennis treadmill.

"There's way too many tournaments," she said. "If you don't play enough, you really get punished, your ranking falls."

Wonder what Clijsters' dad thinks.