A day in the tennis life of Kim Clijsters can be short. The trimmer, faster Belgian 15th seed took 12 minutes to lead 4-0 against America's Marissa Irvin, won the first set 6-1 in 21 minutes and tidied up the second, 6-1, in 23 minutes for a 44-minute match. The second set of Marat Safin's contest against Mark Philippoussis lasted 57 minutes.
Diminishing the opposition so smartly is something at which Clijsters excels. Always in a hurry on court and a ferocious competitor, the 22-year-old pounced on every ball yesterday and made the sort of moves that could convince she is a real contender.
While the 93rd-ranked Irvin missed easy pots and could not consistently maintain a high-tempo backcourt rally, Clijsters still did the job with commanding ease.
No longer wearing the heavy strapping that supported a knee at the French Open, clear of the wrist injury that had kept her off the tour and even clear of her ex-boyfriend Lleyton Hewitt, Clijsters has at least managed to impress against the soft first-week opposition where many others have just made do.
A runner-up in Roland Garros in 2001, and at Roland Garros and the US Open in 2003, and then again at the Australian Open in 2004, Clijsters hasn't yet reached the summit. Against Jennifer Capriati in the 2001 final she was two points short of victory on four occasions. While the speed at which she travels through the draw towards finals is always eye-catching, the finishing tape has always been just out of grasp. Still, she could be nothing less than satisfied with this second-round sprint.
"On a scale of one to 10, I would give myself eight," she said. "I think everything went pretty well. This is the best I have felt for a long time.
"I'm very happy with this win. I was moving better, moving lower, bending down through my legs and felt I was seeing the ball well. It has been a long time since I felt like this. That's a good feeling to have."
Her next opponent, Roberta Vinci, should be a little worried with that self-endorsement. Clijsters is perhaps the most unaffected player on the tour, an adjustment she made growing up in a house when her father was playing on the Belgian soccer team. Perspective has come easy to her.
So too has it come to Lindsay Davenport, another articulate voice. The US number one advanced almost as smoothly as Clijsters on a day in which the seeding committee would have been much pleased with their work. The main players came through, Davenport 6-0, 6-3 in 52 minutes against her compatriot Jamea Jackson.
"The first set was easy," said a candid Davenport. "The second set was not. It was tough. I was 3-1 down. A couple of other games went to deuce. So definitely I had some close games there in the second set."
Even the fragile French woman Amelie Mauresmo arrived from the graveyard Court Two beaming and ready to pose with fans for photographs and sign autographs.
Her Spanish opponent, Maria Sanchez Lorenzo, took just three games in another encounter that again didn't make it to the hour mark.
"Obviously I'm feeling much better," said the third seed. "You know the rhythm is coming. It was really important for me to go to Eastbourne because I really got to practise on the grass."
Mauresmo surprisingly lost her first game in the warm-up tournament in Eastbourne and was expected to have some confidence issues.
Instead, she could not remember the last time she played so well on grass. "I really felt that everything was working very well, not only my service games but I was returning pretty well," she said.
The sixth seed, Elena Dementieva, was the only one of the top players to struggle.
The Russian took three sets and was pushed to win the match 8-6 in the final one against the 177-ranked qualifier Sabine Klaschka. Dementieva, the only woman in 2004 to play in two grand slam finals, seems uncomfortable on the grass surface.
