His left ankle was throbbing painfully after an awkward fall, the William Tell Overture had started playing on a mobile phone just as he was about to receive a serve, the crowd was firmly behind his opponent and he was being given the runaround by a 19-year-old playing in his first significant tournament. Just when Magnus Norman thought things could not get any worse, he glanced up at the scoreboard.
There, writ large, was the story of the match taking place on Centre Court. While he was on his way out of the tournament, his girlfriend, Martina Hingis, was enjoying a stroll in the park against Yi Jing-Qian a few hundred yards away. It looked like the beginning of a thoroughly unequal relationship.
Norman, the second-ranked men's player in the world, and Hingis, the leading woman, who have been going out together for several weeks, must have been imagining fondly that this fortnight would launch them as the new golden couple of the sport. Norman's debacle on Court No 1 yesterday put paid to that.
The Swede attempted some damage-limitation when he realised that the end was inevitable, asking a ballgirl to play a point for him in recognition of his powerlessness in the face of Olivier Rochus, his Belgian conqueror. By then, though, he had fallen from grace with a display that matched outbreaks of petulance with sustained impotence against a player who is 179th in the rankings.
Rochus was a revelation, a diminutive bundle of irrepressible energy and rock-steady nerve, whose fierce, if somewhat unorthodox, groundstrokes kept Norman anchored to the baseline. That might have been expected to favour the Swede, who was runner-up on the clay of Roland Garros earlier this month, but he was worn down by the greater accuracy and consistency of Rochus. Norman must have been envious of his opponent's natural flamboyance, but he hid it well afterwards. "He seemed small at the start," Norman said, "but he got bigger with every game."
As Norman's hopes ebbed away, Hingis got stronger and stronger. Yi was not an easy opponent, but she made far too many unforced errors to trouble the 1997 champion, who coasted to a 6-4, 6-1 victory. When the match was at its closest in the first set, Hingis seemed to regard her opponent's challenge as an amusing curiosity rather than a serious threat.
Even in the midst of their contrasting fortunes, though, it became evident yesterday that Norman and Hingis are made for each other.
Slim, sleek, young, elegant, the future - not the past like the retired Steffi Graf and the veteran Andre Agassi - they represent the wholesome image that tennis loves. Anna Kournikova is almost too glamorous to be real, Hingis and Norman are not. If anything, in fact, they are too real.
The barrier to their relationship becoming an obsession of the world outside tennis is that, whatever their admirers may say, they both lack that intangible but essential star quality. It took the crowd on Court No 1 about three games to side with Rochus yesterday and not just because he was the underdog.
All Norman could do in response was grimace and frown. Like Stefan Edberg, his hero, he is one of those players who seems to have it all but whose personality fails to capture the imagination of the public. Banished to Court No 18 for his opening match the day before, he wilted when the spotlight finally fell on him.
Hingis, meanwhile, was doing her utmost to continue the charm offensive that she has mounted here this year by indulging in some repartee with the net cord. Yi kept getting the lucky breaks off the tape so Hingis, amused by this glimpse of adversity, marched up to it and smacked it hard with her racket. She laughed a lot more than the crowd.
Undaunted, she returned to the net a couple of games later like a comedian turning to a favourite old joke. Yi, attempting the latest in a series of inept drop shots, finally found fortune against her as the ball failed to topple over the net. As the crowd groaned, Hingis made a pushing motion with her hands, implying that she had been imploring the cord to favour her for once. The crowd still groaned.
A Swiss and a Swede are hardly a recipe for fun and frolics. By that stage, Norman was in the final throes of his 6-4, 2-6, 6-4, 6-7, 6-1 defeat in 3hr 14min. Gone was the humour of the day before, when he had been asked whether he and Hingis ever knocked up together. "We have better things to do," he had replied dryly.
Instead, he may find himself mulling over the words of Serena Williams, who was asked for her views on the outbreak of romance between players on the tennis circuit. "It's really hard if you get involved in a relationship," she said. "Next thing you know, your game goes down, all kinds of things happen."
Hingis, though, was not exactly brimming with sympathy. "Unfortunately, he lost," she said, "but I had a good day at the office. My game doesn't seem to have gone down too much and anyway, what would Serena Williams know about relationships? I don't know if she's had any."