There was plenty for fans of physical contrast on No4 Court last night, where Ivo Karlovic of Croatia, who, at 6ft 10in is the tallest player to rank in the ATP top 100, took on Steve Darcis of Belgium, who, at 5ft 10in, isn't.

Throw in an umpire who, just by coincidence, was (how best to put this?) one of the more condensed officials operating at the championships and, all in all, it was quite a scene out there. When all three gathered at the net for the toss, it looked like a rather badly organised wallchart showing the evolution of man.

To be fair to Darcis, he is by no means the smallest player on the tour. No one yesterday was tempted to shout “Stand up” at him, the way that some parliamentary wag did at John Bercow, the new Speaker of the House of Commons (5ft 6in). Fans hoping to witness the whole span of available heights on one court really needed Karlovic to have drawn another Belgian - Christophe Rochus, who is just an inch taller than Bercow.

Nevertheless, 5ft 10in puts Darcis in the lower percentile for fully grown men on the professional circuit, the vast majority of players being north of 6ft.

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And, slightly discouragingly for the rest of them, the last man to win Wimbledon who was less than 6ft was Lleyton Hewitt in 2002, and even the scrubby Aussie nuzzled just under the bar at 5ft 11in.

Before that you have to go all the way back to Andre Agassi in 1992 (5ft 10in).

Anyway, the Belgian ended up being sat upon from a great height, losing in straight sets of 7-5, 6-3, 6-4, which might have seemed predictable, given that he was conceding an entire foot in length to his opponent. Then again, Karlovic is something of a longstanding mystery. He is 30 and has been coming to Wimbledon for six years. Indeed, he is probably the second most famous tall landmark at the All England Club, after that crane with the television camera on it.

His service - which, in effect, comes downhill - is a 135mph monster. An opponent could try to get something on it, obviously, but the physical consequences could be dire and there is a decent chance that he would end up having to go round to lost property immediately afterwards to see if anyone had handed in his racket and, quite possibly, his arm. Moreover, the Croat has the composure and the speed. Yet somehow he is the veteran of four first-round exits and has never been any farther than the fourth round.

Then again, sheer height alone is no guarantee and if we point out that people as small as Darcis don't tend to win Wimbledon, we need also to point out that neither do people as tall as Karlovic. You need to be tall, it seems - but not that tall.

Richard Krajicek, who won in 1996, is 6ft 5in; Goran Ivanisevic, who won in 2001, 6ft 4in. Otherwise, lanky seems to offer no guarantees. Witness the fact that Robert Wadlow, of the United States, who died in 1940, having attained a height of 8ft 11in, making him the tallest person in history, was not, by all accounts, especially handy around a tennis court and certainly never got anywhere in a grand-slam tournament. It's possibly handiest of all, in the modern era, to be 6ft 1in, like Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Pete Sampras.

Still, on this occasion, as the sun sank and the shadows lengthened (Karlovic's shadow in particular), Darcis had very few answers to Karlovic's power and reach, and definitely no answer to his 24 aces, and may well have wished that he were somewhere else.

But then, most players on No4 Court probably wish that they were somewhere else. What with the wind, the aircraft, the permanently shifting crowd and the people screaming at Jamie Murray's hair on the neighbouring No5 Court, it would probably be easier to concentrate while playing in a tumble dryer.

But hey - that's tennis - the highs and the lows.