Chris Eaton drives a Vauxhall Astra with duct tape on one of its wing mirrors and strings his own tennis rackets because he knows exactly how he likes them to feel in his grip. Eaton is an English tennis player who has a bullet of a serve, loves to volley, possesses a dreamy single-handed backhand and is not the least fazed by the prospect of winning a match at Wimbledon (Alex Bogdanovic take note). He went to the same school, Reed’s in Cobham, Surrey, as Tim Henman and for some time yesterday, played a lot like him.

If you think this is made up, you ought to have been on No 3 Court yesterday when Eaton, the world No 661, went about defeating Boris Pashanski, of Serbia, in three sets, so that he can offer Andy Murray some second-round company.

We are used to all sorts of weird and wonderfully unlikely sights and sounds at Wimbledon, but bear hugs in the section housing British coaches is a rare phenomenon.

Roger Draper, the LTA chief executive, confirmed yesterday that Brad Gilbert would be departing the British scene in September, after the US Open, a partnership that began to a fanfare of trumpets and has ended knee-deep in embarrassment. “He has been great for British tennis, but he wants to coach top players again and once he split from Andy \, it was time for him to go,” Draper said. But wasn’t that in November? One wonders if, in the months between, Gilbert had ever been asked to cast his experienced eye across Eaton and help to develop a game with so much going for it.

Naomi Cavaday produced a fabulous set against Venus Williams, which should not mean that everything in her garden is rosy, but the manner in which she took the game to the defending champion on Centre Court, serving with gusto and striking cross-court winners with courage and conviction, ought to give rise to optimism that she will not linger at No 197 in the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour rankings.

The champion’s face was a study in flint as Cavaday stayed with her, stroke for stroke until, at 5-4 down in the tie-break, the 19-year-old from Kent netted perhaps her least composed backhand of the match. From there, Williams cantered away to win 7-6, 6-1.

Anne Keothavong, the first from these shores — well, via Laos — to gain direct entry into the draw for a decade, defeated Vania King, of the United States, 4-6, 6-2, 6-3 and is already a leading contender for the award for the best toilet break of the championships.

Having played a horrid first set, Keothavong took herself off for some relief and came back completely refreshed. Tomorrow, she will play Williams.

Nikolay Davydenko, the largely unloved world No 4 whose life has been turned upside down in the past ten months because of a match he did not complete, said dasvidania at the first-round stage for the fifth time in his career yesterday and those who prefer their Russians to have graduated from the Marat Safin school of the slightly wild and menacing will not be sorry to see the android-like baseliner bid farewell.

Davydenko lost 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 (even the score was dull) to Benjamin Becker, the German, who was the last player faced by Andre Agassi as a professional. It was Davydenko’s 82nd match since that in Sopot, Poland last August from which he retired hurt, something that looked — on the face of it — to be a harmless act but was, in fact, the signal for Betfair, the world’s leading online betting exchange, to void the bets that had reached a total of £3.5 million. Davydenko won the first set easily, yet Martin Vassallo Arguello, an Argentinian ranked No 87 at the time, was still favoured to win in the Betfair market.

A little more light was shed on that dark corner of the sport yesterday when Davydenko accepted that, although the match was played in Poland, a lot of Russians were courtside and he may have spoken to Irina, his wife, who was in the row behind him, a little too indiscreetly. “Maybe I said something I don’t want to play or I can retire,” he said. “Some people can understand. It may be my mistake because I needed to be quiet. I needed to do, you know, only my job. I have tried to defend myself how possible, but I defend already for a year. I don’t know how long I can defend myself. Maybe to the end of my career.”

Clearly, of all the matches that have raised eyebrows in recent years, that between Davydenko and Vassallo Arguello (who won his first-round match yesterday) has been the bête noire. How could the odds have been so skewed — Davydenko was the equivalent of 5-1 against and Vassallo Arguello odds on? Those who really know these things will tell you that something amiss went on, but finding out what and proving it beyond doubt are very different. So the investigation has plodded on.

Rafael Nadal produced a more predictable result yesterday, scoring a straights-set victory over Andreas Beck, a German qualifier, who served like blazes, but was worn down by the sheer relentlessness of the world No 2.