Kournikova shines as kids come out

FOR ONCE, this corner of London was just like any other English suburb on a summer's afternoon yesterday. The rain stopped, the sun appeared and the kids came out to play.

A couple of them had been due to kick off their championships on Monday evening. But even if the weather hadn't prevented their appearances, scheduling their matches for last on to their respective courts ran the risk that their bedtimes just might have done so.

Yet the delay seemed to sharpen Anna Kournikova's appetite for her senior Wimbledon debut. The 16-year-old Russian produced a highly convincing display against an out-of-sorts Chanda Rubin.

Kournikova may still have a lot to learn, but over the 43 minutes it took to beat the American 6-1, 6-1, she showed she already has the range of shots and maturity 19 cause established stars some serious problems.

Rubin (21), has enjoyed little good fortune recently. Since she won the Austrian Open at Linz in February, she has been troubled by injury and, having failed to reach even a quarter-final in the intervening months, she continued to look well short of her best on centre court.

Nevertheless, the Russian played well, winning points from every area of the court, and threatened to whitewash her opponent until Rubin finally held serve at 5-0 down in the opening set.

Kournikova served and returned well, and seemed surprisingly at home at the net where she volleyed commandingly. And she completely outplayed Rub in from the baseline. First appearances can, of course, be deceptive but, on the strength of this, Kournikova, who faces Barbara Rittner in the second round, seems set for a highly rewarding career here at the All England Club.

The same should be true of Martina Hingis, only nine months older than Kournikova but already ranked number one in the world and the top seed. But Hingis is unlikely to reflect positively on the first match of her campaign.

Having been expected to coast through a first-round encounter with a qualifier, Anne Kremer, who won as many matches last week in Roehampton to get here as she had done in all other WTA tournaments combined this season, Hingis was more than once made to look second best before battling her way to a 6-4, 6-4 win.

Kremer certainly started the match more brightly and after displaying a remarkable mobility around the baseline and an ability to pull dramatic winners out of seemingly hopeless situations she quickly found herself a break up at 2-1 in the opener.

She held onto the advantage for a couple of games but at deuce in the sixth her service began to crumble when she double-faulted twice and suddenly allowed Hingis a chance to take the initiative.

In the next game, however, she bounced back aggressively, getting into the net whenever the opportunity arose and eventually winning it with a well reached backhand down the line that paused agonisingly in the net cord before creeping over.

From that point on the fortunes of the woman from Luxembourg continued to vary dramatically, depending on whether she herself was blowing hot or cold. The title favourite looked on for long stretches, happy when the opportunities were offered to pick up easy points but at other times apparently unable to dictate the course of the match.

Kremer, rated a modest 219th in the world, is far from ordinary and she mixed brilliance and buffoonery in fairly equal measure. Even after allowing the first set to slip away she still seemed capable of threatening her more illustrious opponent.

She did, however, have difficulty at various times with her service as well as her forehand and the succession of points dropped as a result of these problems allowed Hingis to come from a break down again in the second to edge her way towards victory.

At 4-2, though, and just when it seemed that Kremer had blown herself out she broke back, completing the game with a magnificent cross-court forehand passing shot. In the next, Hingis looked more confident than at any previous point in the match as she restored the two-game cushion.

But the world's best player struggled to finish off her opponent, passing up two match points in the ninth before clinching her place in the last 64 at the sixth attempt courtesy of another wild forehand from Kremer that flew well wide of its intended destination.

I knew I wasn't playing my best and she was a lot stronger than people expected but overall I was happy," said Hingis afterwards. "It was good for my first match on grass this year and I know I will need to get better or it will be dangerous for me but she could be a lot higher in the world if she played like that."

In the end the victory took 92 minutes to achieve, some 41 longer than Arantxa Sanchez Vicario's demolition of Britain's Clare Wood. The Spaniard, who in the absence of Steffi Graf and the relative inexperience of the other favourites will probably never have a better opportunity to lift the title here, stormed to a 6-0, 6-0 first-round win.

It was a polished performance from the 25-year-old and one that should serve as a warning to the youngsters that not everyone at Wimbledon is entirely sure that their time has come quite yet.