A little of the light goes out of any tournament when Maria Sharapova is no longer part of its scenery. Sharapova's 6-2, 3-6, 6-4 defeat by Gisela Dulko - greeted a touch too enthusiastically on Centre Court - proved that there is still much piecing together of the Russian's game to be done.

Though the 2004 champion would never admit it publicly, she did not think she had the greatest chance of touching those teenage heights again this year. Her shoulder is still a bit dicky, she has not had enough matches to be competitively drilled and the game that once came to her naturally is a struggle. But she will not give in. Not a chance.

Dulko, of Argentina, sensed a chance and, after four edgy match points, the world No 45 finally drew another of the forehand errors off the ground that littered Sharapova's play. Considering Dulko had lost their previous two matches for the grand total of three games - and Sharapova had won all six of the three-set matches she had played since returning to the game in May after shoulder surgery last year - this was a heck of a Centre Court introduction. The crowd definitely favoured her.

“Maybe the people get into the way I played,” Dulko said. “I don't think it was because of Maria. They were just a big support for me because they like the way I started to play.” Indeed, Dulko's control, especially on her backhand, the slices and the dinks, contrived to unsettle Sharapova, who never hit the stride expected of her.

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“This is not an overnight process,” the Russian said. “I had so many easy balls and I made a lot of unforced errors from those. When I've had those situations before they would have been pieces of cake, but today they weren't. And though I served pretty good in the first couple of sets, the pace really slowed. There was no juice on it.”

That will return with time and patience, which are never easy to acquire in this cut-throat world where, in the past, Sharapova has been as cut-throat as anyone. You do not earn more than $12 million (about £7.3 million) in prize money in this sport unless you possess real fortitude. And that is what Sharapova has to rediscover, as well as the assurance that she can play without second-guessing how her arm is going to feel when she strikes the ball.

There are those who believe that Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, the 17-year-old Russian, will follow Sharapova into the grand-slam winners' circle, but they will have to wait a while because the No 31 seed was defeated 6-4, 7-6 by Roberta Vinci, of Italy.