The new roof closed in brilliant luminance and a new Wimbledon was born on Monday night.

It was banquet time but providence did not serve up caviar and champagne but a Swiss roll. His name is Stanislas Wawrinka and he had our Andy Murray almost on the floor. He played twice as well as I have ever seen him play, inspired I believe by the occasion. But at just before 10.40pm, after five sets and almost four hours, Murray's skill and desire inched him through.

Now he up against the real class of Juan Carlos Ferrero in the quarter-finals. If he gets through that then his last battle before the final would be against either Andy Roddick or Lleyton Hewitt. It is no easier than that.

Everything else that happened at Wimbledon on Monday fades into ordinariness. What a contrast between Murray's late, late show with all it's passion and Roger Federer's rather formal progress earlier in the afternoon. The best player in the world made it sound like it was just another day at the office. The fact is he played rather like that and was without inspiration. He won by what the players call winning the big points. In other words he changed gear whenever danger threatened.

So Federer is through to the quarter-finals yet again and next he will have to tame the 6ft 10in, unsmiling Croatian Ivo Karlovic.

The women's match I most enjoyed in round four was the top seed, the youngster Dinara Safina of Russia, against Amelie Mauresmo of France. The double fascination was that it was the first match in the championship completed under the closed roof. I also wanted to see if Mauresmo was still inclined to wobble under stress. In a word Safina proved the tougher nut and is in Venus Williams' part of the draw.

In terms of temperament Safina could not be more unlike her big brother, Marat. Dinara is all consistent physical effort; Marat is all kinds of people in one match. One year at Wimbledon would you believe even the sight of that tennis fanatic Boris Yeltsin watching from the stands could not rouse Marat from the doldrums.

Meanwhile, I must admit I have been left puzzled. Olga Morozova was good enough to have played in the 1974 Wimbledon final against Chris Evert. More recently she has been coaching Svetlana Kuznetsova who won the French Open. Olga and her husband live in leafy Maidenhead which is probably no more than a 40-minute drive from the LTA headquarters. You would have thought that they might want to use her experience but seeing as they don't, Olga is getting on with things. She told me that she is launching a world-class coaching course on the internet in English and in Russian.

Finally, and this is a personal bit, I got a big hug from Fred Perry's daughter Penny by her father's statue here on Monday. I used to do commentary with the great man. We all miss him.