Tennis: She may not have put a foot on the green stuff since she departed London last year with the title, but Serena Williams still does things the family way.

Dad was watching. Venus too. Her outfit was alarming, her tennis a little less so, and still she emerged a first-round winner against China's Jie Zheng.

Screaming at herself during the match, and mumbling incomprehensibly at her wild errors, the number one seed still turned over her 5 ft 4 in opponent 6-3, 6-1.

Williams hit just two service winners in the modest challenge and 24 unforced errors. Still, no damage done, and Serena, as is her want, came in clap happy and delighted with her early tournament performance. Those who had the temerity to suggest that she was still finding her way on the grass and rediscovering the bounce and slide of the lush early tournament surface were confidently shot down.

"No, I don't think it took me time to adapt (to the grass). This is one of the times I think I did pretty decent. I'm working on a few things. I want to do it now rather than at the quarter-finals or later on. But you guys feel free to come to the practice court if you want to help me out."

She knows how to stop a line of questioning as quickly as halting the progress of a Zheng, or any other player outside the top 50 in the world.

But Williams is struggling with her game, or that is the perception of those outside the family who no longer believe she is the best player in the world. Put in as the top seed by the idiosyncratic Wimbledon committee, Williams' current singles world ranking is 10, although last month it was 11, her lowest since August 1999. She also fell to Jennifer Capriati at Roland Garros in the quarter-final for her earliest Grand Slam loss since 2001 Wimbledon.

All of that adds up to a slipping of the Williams mask. The sometimes over-bearing confidence has been replaced with a sensitivity and a reticence that appears to prevent her from acknowledging that she played badly but won. But when in a corner, fight back.

"Twenty-four unforced errors Serena?"

"Well, I don't know. I'm playing good. You never hear me saying I'm playing good. So that's pretty confident for me and pretty bold for me to say that."

"Did you find it took you some time to adapt?"

"No, I don't think it took me time to adapt at all, no."

"But there were a few errors, you'd say, wouldn't you?"

"Well, I'm going to come in here, you guys are going to coach me now. You guys are going to be coaches now. You're going to talk about unforced errors."

The domination of the family means that a Venus or a Serena will play every day until one of them loses. That, as they would say themselves, is neat.

While Serena was a little fractious, Daniela Hantuchova came in smiling. It has been some time since the Slovakian has been that buoyant. Last year, after quite a disturbing match in which she intermittently cried and sobbed throughout, Hantuchova was subsequently said to be suffering from anorexia. She has since increased her weight and with it her abundant talent has returned, at least enough of it to see off the threat of American Samantha Reeves 6-1, 6-4.

"I think everyone saw it last year, that I was struggling a little bit. It's behind me now," she said after the match. She had said that before. This time it was convincing.

Russians Nadia Petrova, seeded 10, and Elena Bovina joined Monday winner and French Open champion Anastasia Myskina in the second round to keep the main draw body count high for their country. Former president Boris Yeltsin, watching as a guest in the Royal Box, missed out on that success. In part responsible for the success of the current crop of Russian players due to the money he injected into the domestic game, the politician failed see any of them as American, Chinese, Spanish, French and Croatian players passed through Centre Court but no Russians.

Yeltsin, however, was also spared the departure of French Open finalist Elena Dementieva and Svetlana Kuznetsova. Dementieva was an emotional wreck in Paris and doesn't seem to have recovered. The sixth seed departed to 26-year-old Sandra Kleinova, a player 123 places below her in the rankings.

Dementieva is this year's Hantuchova.