• 
• 

Defending champion Amelie Mauresmo was bundled out of The Championships in the fourth round, washed away in a flood of her own errors as she crashed 7-6 (8-6), 4-6, 6-1, to the 18-year-old Czech Nicole Vaidisova on Centre Court.

The polar extremes of the Frenchwoman's afternoon were her 13 aces and 14 double-faults. In between there was a variety of tennis which was wild even by her current uncertain standards - confident volleys mixed with hopelessly mistimed groundstrokes. Even her backhand, the glory of the Mauresmo game when things are going well, was so often a liability today.

Mauresmo has been urgently in search of her old form following an appendicitis operation in March which kept her off the tour for two months and, as ever, her right leg was bandaged to help cope with her long-term adductor strain.

She had come through three rounds comfortably enough but in the hard-hitting Vaidisova, who beat her at the French Open last year, Mauresmo ran into the sort of opponent able to undermine her fragile confidence with a stream of hard-struck shots from the baseline.

It did not help Mauresmo's shaky state that there were three rain breaks which turned the two hour 19 minute match into a three hour 45 minute ordeal in all.

There were early ominous signs when the tall Czech teenager broke in only the third game of the opening set. But Vaidisova was not the essence of calmness herself - this was evident when she dropped her own serve in the next game, sending the rest of the set into a succession of service breaks. There were four in succession, with Mauresmo's double-faults keeping pace effortlessly with the aces.

Mauresmo served for the set at 5-3, only to blow it, and when it came down to the tie-break (which alone contained seven losses of serve) she found herself with three set points, leading 6-3 only to lose the next five points and go a set down after 64 minutes.

Mauresmo urgently needed to pull herself together and, to her credit, she managed to do so in the second set, serving better and winning it by breaking Vaidisova just once.

But any hopes from her supporters that this presaged a revival were shortlived thanks to a third set in which Vaidisova played confidently and aggressively, while Mauresmo looked like the comparative newcomer to the tour.

A wild backhand cost Mauresmo her serve in the second game after Vaidisova had struck her only ace of the match in the first game. Soon it was 3-0 as the Czech fought back from 0-30 and Vaidisova even had a point for a 4-0 lead on Mauresmo's 12th double-fault, inevitably by an ace from the champion.

The harder Mauresmo battled to get back on terms the more erratic she became and, with Vaidisova leading 4-1, she again faced break point on another double-fault. This time there would be no rescuing ace. Astonishingly, Mauresmo attempted a drop shot from near the baseline, it failed miserably and she was 5-1 down.

With more rain imminent Vaidisova hurriedly served for one of the biggest victories of her career and when Mauresmo lost the first point on a netted forehand volley, the Frenchwoman angrily swatted the ball out of court, receiving a code of conduct warning.

From there, the downward path steepened. A forehand error left her two points from embarrassing defeat, a forehand service return into the net brought the Czech two match points and she needed only one as Mauresmo crashed a service return into the netting. by Ronald Atkin