Farewell Ana and Amélie. And who the heck is Zheng Jie? These tales and more unfolded on the lawns yesterday as the women’s championship began to look decidedly like a case of who can stop Venus or Serena?

The losses of Ana Ivanovic and Amélie Mauresmo were in the shock/ but not really a shock category. Ivanovic lost 6-1, 6-4 in a little over an hour to the No 5-ranked Chinese, Zheng, a player who has recovered from serious ankle surgery that forced her to miss last year’s championships, and moved around No 1 Court yesterday like one of her nation’s raft of fearsome table tennis players. Mauresmo was beaten 7-6, 6-1 by Serena Williams, who does not, as far as we are aware, do ping pong.

“Ivanovic was lost, she did not know what to do,” was the verdict of Virginia Wade, the 1977 Wimbledon champion, who probably never saw a player from China in her career. Wade’s verdict was hard but fair because the Serb survived against Nathalie Dechy, of France, in the second round only thanks to a fluky net cord on match point against her and a bucketload of instinct and willpower. Zheng, a 24-year-old from Chengdu and a tiny terrier of a hitter, possessed plenty of those characteristics.

Zheng had written to ask the All England Club management committee for a wild card and the fact that she had qualified for the French Open and reached the third round, she was a former women’s doubles champion at Wimbledon and this is China’s Olympic year contrived to work in her favour. She has certainly done the invitation proud.

It would have taken a monstrous effort for Ivanovic to complete the French-Wimbledon double, even though she had improved every year on her results on the grass here. More often than not, there is a tremendous mental let-down, a feeling in the back of the mind that it simply cannot be done and Ivanovic, for all her puppy-like enthusiasm, seemed constrained from the first ball in SW19.

“I took some time off, so I didn’t have much time to practise and to do all these little specific movements and things you need to in order to adjust to the grass,” the 20-year-old said. “You have to accept that not every shot you’re going to hit is going to be perfect. On clay, if you’re struggling a little bit, you still have time to get into the game.”

When Nicole Vaidisova lost in the first round of three consecutive clay-court events, in Berlin, Rome and the French Open, David Felgate wondered if his second dip into women’s coaching was a shocking aberration. Things on grass had not been that much better, as Vaidisova succumbed in the quarter-finals of the Edgbaston Trophy a fortnight ago to Bethanie Mattek, of the United States, and in the first round at Eastbourne to Olga Govortsova, an up-and-comer from Ukraine.

Felgate is known as a chipper, positive person but he was having trouble accepting the 19-year-old’s indifference to what was happening to her tennis. Something had to change. When she smashed her racket midway through a run of nine consecutive lost games against Samantha Stosur, of Australia, in the second round, it was all Felgate could do to stay in his seat. Remarkably Vaidisova was the first woman to reach the last 16 yesterday, a 6-2, 6-4 victor over Casey Dellacqua, also of Australia, a creditable scoreline not least in that at 4-3, 30-all in the second set, with the Czech teenager poised for victory, the first drops of rain began to fall and the players had to scurry for cover. Vaidisova thwacked two balls against the backdrop of No 18 Court, so angry was she to have to stop.

Felgate, who coached Tim Henman for nine years, knows all about how players ought to cope with breaks for rain in SW19 and he worried that Vaidisova might tie herself in mental knots. He should not have been unduly concerned because the blonde came out to complete the match with a competent hold of serve and, finally, a towering ace down the T. “I hadn’t seen her smile that widely since we started working together,” Felgate said. “I have told her it is about hitting the big spots on the court, staying in the present and she faced only one break point against her serve today.”