It is mayhem out there. Really, it is. Watching Roger Federer or Justine Henin, it probably does not come over that way, but Wimbledon yesterday was a battlefield of broken souls and wounded egos. It was the same last year and it will be today, too: for every winner a loser, in and out of the locker-room and on to the travel agent to book the first flight home.

And if you are in the women’s game, it is damned lonely, too. Why? Because, as Alicia Molik, the Australian, put it: “No one cares.”

Aleksandra Wozniak, the Canadian, who was dumped out of the singles by mid-afternoon yesterday, said: “Some girls might say, ‘bad luck’, but they don’t mean it. They’re just happy to see another girl out of the tournament.”

How many will ring you and ask how you are? “Zero.” That answer came from Ashley Harkleroad, an American, who was in and out of the singles tournament in 58 minutes. “The locker-room is full of girls who are concerned about what their next move is. Most of the girls want you to lose. It’s like this: you’re out here for yourself. And girls are catty. They care about what they’re doing, not what you are doing.”

This is how Molik sees it. And Molik is about as friendly and gregarious a player as you will find in this environment. “When you lose, no one cares,” she said. “Why should they? Everyone loses every day, except for a handful of people. It’s just your good friends that worry about you when you’ve lost. It’s a dog-eat-dog world. Someone gets injured and it’s great because the tenth person in the world goes up to No 9. Everyone is out for themselves and you have to be.”

Molik should know about the injury side of things. In February 2005, she got her singles ranking up to a high of No 8 in the world; two months later, she suffered a rare middle-ear infection that many thought would end her career. In the year that she spent away from tennis, Molik said that she was effectively forgotten about by her peers. “Maybe a handful from the tour contacted me,” she said. “Maybe five, not many more. It’s no doubt that it’s during the tough times people really show their true colours.”

But she does not mind. She is not bitter. She said this just to explain how it is. And nor was Harkleroad complaining yesterday when she described what a lonely, miserable place the women’s tour can be.

“I probably wouldn’t get my kids into it,” she said. “It’s not a life. Everybody loses except for one person. So pretty much every week you’re going to lose. Travelling week after week, it’s not that much fun, not when you’re probably losing every week. I’m ranked 77 in the world, so there’s not too much winning going on.”

Indeed, Harkleroad has played in 17 grand-slam singles competitions and been a first-round loser in nine. It takes tough skin to keep on coming and, as she said, the glamour is fleeting. “It’s Wimbledon? Whatever,” she said. “You come to event like this and you can come and go, just like that.

“Travelling around the WTA Tour isn’t that glamorous, at least not unless you’re top ten or 20. It’s actually not a fun life whatsoever. It’s a difficult life. It’s a bit lonely. You’re travelling around with a bunch of girls. What can be the fun in that?”

Not a lot when friendships are pretty much nonexistent.

“It’s not fun on the tour,” Wozniak said. “The girls are so competitive. They know you, but they don’t want to be your friend.”

A reasonable barometer here – on a tour where so many are in the same town week in, week out – is how many other players these girls would dine out with. For Molik? “Only a handful.” For Harkleroad? “I don’t eat with other girls.” Molik said: “Females are different to males in that we are very protective and very closed. A lot of girls don’t want to give too much away and don’t want to enter into too many friendships, for fear of having to play that person. I think females in general are maybe a bit more closed like that.”

Indeed, if there is fun to be had, it is away from the tour. In her year out of the sport, Molik enrolled for Australian television’s Dancing with the Stars. “I went off on the third show,” she said. “I never voted for myself once. And I was more than happy to leave.”

But she did notice a change on her return to tennis: more of the players talked to her. Not about tennis, but about the dancing. And these were conversations, too; not friendships.

Results

Men Singles: First round: T Haas (Ger) bt Z Fleishman (US) 6-3, 6-4, 6-2; F González (Chile) bt R Ginepri (US) 3-6, 7-6, 6-2, 6-2; A Falla (Col) bt S Querrey (US) 7-6, 6-1, 6-4; R Federer (Switz) bt T Gabashvili (Russ) 6-3, 6-2, 6-4; F Serra (Fr) bt P Kohlschreiber (Ger) 7-6, 6-4, 6-4; A Roddick (US) bt J Gimelstob (US) 6-1, 7-5, 7-6; M Berrer (Ger) bt A Montañes (Sp) 6-3, 6-3, 6-2. Women Singles: First round: S Peer (Isr) bt T Tanasugarn (Thai) 7-5, 6-2; A Nakamura (Japan) bt M Sucha (Slovakia) 7-5, 6-2; L Granville (US) bt A Wozniak (Can) 7-6, 6-3; S Bammer (Austria) bt V Lepchenko (Uzb) 6-2, 6-2; R Vinci (It) bt A Harkleroad (US) 6-2, 6-1; M Hingis (Switz) bt N Cavaday (GB) 6-7, 7-5, 6-0; K Kanepi (Est) bt T Malek (Ger) 6-1, 6-4; L Safarova (Cz) bt Z Ondraskova (Cz) 7-5, 6-2; P Schnyder (Switz) bt C Pin (Fr) 6-1, 4-6, 8-6.