We shall not see a ball more thoroughly abused during this tournament. Marat Safin, incandescent with rage at himself, earned an official reprimand from the umpire yesterday for cracking a stray ball over the roof of No1 Court. It was last seen heading up the A3 towards Guildford - unlike Safin, who, having calmed down, was last seen heading into the semi-finals of Wimbledon for the first time in his tempestuous career.

You always expect sparks. Code violations? Safin wrote the book. Then he attacked it with his racket until the binding split. By the time he took exception to that innocent ball yesterday, he had risked the umpire's displeasure with three incidents of racket rage, bouncing the head off the court with a violence that recalled the golden age when the Russian was easily the biggest snapper of equipment in the professional game.

Talking after his 3-6, 7-5, 7-6, 6-3 triumph over Feliciano López, of Spain, Safin said: “He's a very uncomfortable player.” The truth is, we're all a bit uncomfortable around Safin, who comes trailing the acrid scent of spent matches. He is the lit firework to which you should never return and in yesterday's early exchanges the back of his neck seemed to be glowing a worrying shade of red.

We never learnt what that pink liquid was in the bottle from which the Russian was refreshing himself during changeovers, but there was ample reason to suspect it might have been some kind of combustible fuel made out of raspberries, akin to the stuff that Prince Charles puts in his Aston Martin. Either that or it was paraffin.

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Whatever it was, one feared that the ball would not be the last thing to feel Safin's displeasure. As the Russian struggled early on to get the measure of the baseline, one feared for the safety of those big new electronic scoreboards. But then, with Safin trailing 5-2 and clouds of smoke beginning to emerge ominously from his seams, it started to rain. On the evidence of the games we had just seen, the languid López would spend the break reclining on a sofa, casually turning the pages of World of Interiors. Safin, on the other hand, would be in the players' bathroom, punching a towel dispenser or jabbing himself in the leg with a Biro.

In fact, the downpour seemed to work like a balm. Safin came back with a newfound control. True, hunting a break point in the fifth game of the second set, he failed to throw a lob up high enough and tipped his head back and roared like a bear that had just been shot in the backside. But otherwise his progress through the next three sets was largely untroubled.

“Uncomfortable” he may be, but López is a hugely watchable player, with a slowly uncurling service action and a smooth but vicious backhand that chops the ball into segments. But when Safin belatedly found his range, he was too powerful and ingenious for him. The Russian's reward, such as it is, is to face the reliably infuriating Roger Federer. Things could get smoky again.

Still, at the end, an enormous smile lit up Safin's face and he delighted the crowd by running back on to the court and performing a selection of steps from Riverdance. Oh, all right, then, no he didn't. He waved grimly and then slung a towel into the cheap seats. Code violation! Towel abuse! But do you want to raise it with him? I know I don't.