Women's game begins now

On court two last Friday in bright sunshine, Justin Henin arrived through the crowd and into the narrow passage that connects the public area with the showcourt.

The bite-sized stadium is a popular area for public and press alike because the seats are literally within touching distance of the players, who occasionally end up in the front rows stretching for angled serves.

Here you could hear the strings of Henin's racquet move when she hit her backhand slice. You could see the sweat dripping from the end of Elena Veshina's nose, the work and constant effort the Russian had to employ to simply to retrieve the Belgian's accurate shots.

It was a lesson on how simple Henin's game can be, how magically she can turn the point and bully her opponents into the corners as her 5ft 6in frame towers over the centre court position. Henin runs two paces left and right. Her opponent is moved from one tramline to the other.

Unlike the Williams, Maria Sharapova or Ana Ivanovic, who hit through their opposite numbers with power and bludgeon them into defeat, Henin cuts them to pieces.

Her run at the top of the draw has her into the fourth round with the loss of only 11 games. Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova are at the same point with a loss of 15 games and Amelie Mauresmo with a loss of 10. The first week for the top seeds has been fraught and difficult with fractured matches, but they arrive at the second Monday hardly taxed.

Of them all, the third seed, Jelena Jankovic, is the only one who has been taken to three sets. Had her third round opponent, Lucie Safarova, steadied herself on big points a little better, she could easily have converted her set lead into the first real shock of the tournament.

The departure of ninth seed, Martina Hingis, to Laura Granville, was writ large in the first round when the injured Swiss player struggled to contain British wildcard Naomi Cavaday.

Today the opposition comes up a notch with Henin, Jankovic and Serena and Venus Willams scheduled to play. Henin, who has yet to win here having made the final twice, faces the 28-year-old Swiss, Patty Schynder, who has toiled in the shadow of the more famous compatriot Hingis but hopes to muscle in on some attention.

Schynder beat Henin on clay last year, the only time in eight matches. Schynder is athletic and can run, but the new-found happiness and reconciliation of Henin with her family over the last 12 months has given a lighter air and freer feel to the normally intense and nervous French Open champion.

A win here for the top seed will probably force an early meeting with Serena Williams in the quarter-finals. Henin will go there with the positive memory that she destroyed her American rival at the same stage at Roland Garros.

The younger of the Williams sisters meets Daniela Hantuchova first and the question is whether the solid game of the Czech 24-year-old is good enough for the "six or seven out of 10" rating Williams has marked her own game. History says not, and unless Williams begins to hit wildly and with abandon without applying the brakes, which occasionally happens, her meeting with Henin is a probability.

Her sister Venus revisits Saturday's unfinished match against Akiko Morigami. While the three-time champion swooped to a 6-1 first set, she found herself 4-1 down in the second to the industrious Japanese player. Shorter by seven inches and lighter by two-and-a-half stone, Morigami was certainly punching above her weight and will have felt the rain that forced their match off court was fortuitous for the American, whose serve had begin to falter. Providence then for Williams? After a first week like the one just experienced, both players should have expected it.

Among other women's seeds, the Russians, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Nadia Petrova and Elena Dementieva, all held the high ground at cessation of play. Fifth-seed Kuznetsova was up a set and a break against up-and-coming Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland; Petrova, held a similar advantage over Spain's Virginia Ruano Pascual; while Dementieva led dangerous Austrian teen Tamira Paszek by a set, with games on serve early in the second.