A few years ago in a tournament in Qatar, Emilio Sanchez (of the Sanchez-Casal doubles team) came up to me smiling as ever and said: "At last the British have a tennis player. He is at our academy in Barcelona."

"Do you mean that Murray boy", I asked. "Yes, Andy," said Emilio. "He is going to be a great player one day."

My trip down memory lane in Doha is especially appropriate because the man he meets in the Wimbledon quarter-finals is the Spaniard Juan Carlos Ferrero who used to have a grasscourt of his own at his academy in Valencia.

The Spaniards, you know, used to sneer that grass was "for the cows" and they used to hold their own national championships during the Wimbledon fortnight. That changed when Manuel Martinez Santana won the Wimbledon final against R.D.Ralston. I don't mind betting a few pesos that Manuel will be in the crowd on Wednesday.

Murray v Ferrero - himself a former French Open champion - will be one for the intellectuals. A duel of angles, manoeuvres, subtle changes of spin and the occasional killing thrust.

Everything on Wednesday's menu is connoisseur stuff; starting with the impeccable Roger Federer taming 6ft 10in Ivo Karlovic's serve which comes down from the statosphere, and on Court One Lleyton Hewitt's revived "come on" fire against Andy Roddick's Yankee buccaneering.

A word or two about Tuesday and especially the young Dinara Safina, the women's top seed. The Wimbledon faithful don't quite know what to make of her yet.

They are informed by a computer that she is the number one-ranked player in the world, but she is still having trouble convincing them that computers know anything about lawn tennis.

Although she eventually won her quarter-final she was really quite awful against the German Sabine Lisicki - even though the German journalists assure me they have not got any tennis players these day (Tommy Haas is essentially an American).

Dinara's ball toss for example was so high that she had ages to decide when to strike it and that was just to get the point started. She handsomely struck her drives anywhere but in court. Her big brother Marat can himself be a trifle dreadful at times - times like the day at the French Open when famously he bared his buttock in disgust having made sure the photographers were watching.

But Dinara has this year been a finalist at the Australian and French Opens - perhaps she too thinks that grass is for the cows.

The final thought from this particular Williams is where would the game be without the Williams sisters? I say come back Justine Henin and Kim Clijsters and quickly too.