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Your support makes all the difference.Aaaaah. The sighs as Anna Kournikova was ousted from the first round of Wimbledon reverberated through Fleet Street, which has made this unseeded Russian tennis player the pin-up of a thousand pages. And quite right. There is something remorseless about the tennis seeding system, which makes the computer calculations of performance around the circuit more important than the drama and chance of a single match beneath the blazing sun (on this occasion, at least, in Wimbledon).
But the joy of tennis is the gladiatorial combat, a test of character as well as skill. Kournikova went out to a fellow Russian, the 21-ranked seed. We should be more concerned by Pete Sampras's back. But Kournikova took the match to three sets, fought off three match points and was graceful. Down with seeds and up with the people's favourites; this is Wimbledon, after all.
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