And then there was one.

Five days done of Wimbledon 2023 and just a single player from 10 Aussies scheduled to play the singles, Sydney’s Chris O’Connell, is still standing.

A self-confessed late bloomer, 29-year-old O’Connell will now face the imposing American Christopher Eubanks this weekend for a place in the last 16.

That is, of course, if it goes ahead on time with the stop/start rains that washed out the early part of the week forecast once more.

Confusion, discombobulation even, has been everywhere. O’Connell saw his opening round match stretch across three days before starting and completing his second-round encounter against Jiri Vessely yesterday in just one session

“Warm up, play a set; warm up, play a couple more sets. It’s actually OK,” said O’Connell.

A dispirited 15th seed, Alex De Minaur, who lost to the 2021 runner-up Matteo Berretttini in three sets, Jason Kubler, Alexander Vukic and Jordan Thompson all made round two, but the winning runs stopped there.

It was not what Australia might have expected.

The women – Daria Saville and Storm Hunter – failed to scrape together even a set against opponents barely touching the top 100. Ash Barty, a new mum last month, is understandably focused elsewhere, and not one Australian woman threatens to even remotely energise us the way the Queenslander did.

Where’s the next Stosur?

And don’t forget that Sam Stosur, who spectacularly beat Serena Williams in the 2011 US Open final, also called it a day last year. The top and middle shelves are bare for Australian women and it looks like some time before they are stocked even half-full again.

The men, meanwhile, are a mix of genuine improvement and flattering- to-deceive. They number nine players in the world top 100 but first and second round exits at nearly all at the biggest tournaments are commonplace.

Maybe we’re just not as good as we think. Take Jordan Thompson, who has emerged as a chilled and likeable person this week, playing beautifully at times on Wednesday against Novak Djokovic on Centre Court. He won 14 games too but ultimately none of them mattered as he never came within a sniff of even a set point.

Thommo will rightly hold his head high – he served to near perfection and enjoyed the better crowd support – but neither Djokovic’s pre-match nor post-match media conferences even referenced the Sydneysider, not even once. A key theme of the Djokovic chat with the press after his victory was the Serb’s wandering spiritual quests. Jordan who?

Of wider intrigue this week has been those perennial British staples, the cold and the rain.

Everyone has been affected. British number one Katie Boulter was 5-6 down to Daria Saville on Tuesday lunchtime when she served to stay in the first set. A drop or two fell and, as you might when you’re up against  the world number 231, Boulter looked to the umpire for a way out, the next eight hours then filled by ever more hopeful announcements that play would indeed be starting again shortly.

Only Andy Murray on the roofed Centre Court was left to earn his keep – and that a non-spectacle, the gritty Scot flattening the journeyman Ryan Peniston.

A dapper Roger Federer shares a joke with Kate Middleton. Photo: Getty

When it rains, Centre Court assumes an even more central role In Wimbledon lore, with the summer-suited Roger Federer back on Centre Court to watch Andy on Tuesday. His wife, Mirka, was there too, immediately to his left, but the bulk of the pictures sent out to global audiences revealed the champ and Kate Middleton – our future Queen – together. They seemed to be having a good chat. What Mirka made of it only Roger will know.

All up, 69 matches failed to see what little light of day there was on Tuesday, and Wednesday kicked off similarly as covers were wrenched on and spectators hung around loosely, unsure whether to give up their court side space or head for strawberries and cream, enticingly priced at $4.80 a punnet.

Top-shelf tipples

Anyone requiring something stronger would perversely, need something stronger just to summon the nerve to dish out $18.65 on a Pimms or boutique vodka. Bars and cafes were packed though, when you’ve shelled out big time to get here, what else is there to do but take cover and booze?

Inside the members enclosure, the caterers seemed full-on while under its outside tarpaulins, members met and preened in front of the unwashed unable to access the hallowed institution.

One former England football international was in full boast. “I don’t organise the Royal Box but I might be able to get you in there,” he graciously told his group. When or how he never specified.

Indeed Wimbledon inhabits a higher social strata to all other British summer sport gatherings – a godsend Nick Kyrgios can be thankful for after his still not fully explained Sunday night singles withdrawal. What a damning of the Aussie character this might have been had the media pressed Kyrgios as much as the public did Usman Khawaja and David Warner as they passed through the Long Room at Lord’s the same day.

The players indulged at the Australian Open are cocooned ever more deeply in SW19. Whereas Melbourne throws out its (impressive) fleet of tournament cars from sponsor Kia, here the elite athletes travel about in Jaguar Defenders, the electric version too.

Perhaps the chauffeurs had been watching too much of the latest James Bond film, in which the Defender featured. Windows have to be shut tight when ferrying players, a driver told me – selfies and kidnapping, he ventured – with another telling me he’d had Novak Djokovic in the back a few days earlier, chatty and happy to sing along to Magic Soul radio. Trivia, yes, but as a mood indicator it can say much.

Security has been a growing theme this week with an interruption to the Boulter/Saville match as elderly demonstrators tottered across Court 18 to shower ‘environmentally friendly orange confetti glitter’ and jigsaw pieces over the grass.

Security tightened, sort of

Just how the oily court invaders can get away with this is not difficult to guess. While just getting into Wimbledon with its airport-style scanners for all luggage is increasingly burdensome – if welcome, given the intent – body checks can be random at best, a point doubtless picked up by the protesting pensioners who also had the foresight to buy the offending jigsaw on-site. It has since, apparently, been removed from sale.

Celebrity, as well as protest, is central to Wimbledon with former England football captain David Beckham seen shuffling across seats in the Royal Box to sit for a selfie while the singer Seal, of a lesser fame, paraded around the grounds unmolested save for the few glamorous types he appeared to have arrived with.

Wimbledon this year may not be one to remember for the Aussies – De Minaur admitted on Wednesday that he and girlfriend Boulter are yet to decide who’ll take which side in their mixed doubles debut – but it remains not just a global sporting highlight but a barometer of where Australian tennis sits.

Promising but can do better, might read the report. Probably a lot better.