IT USED to be taken for granted on the women's tour that the two great Spanish talents in the game, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario and Concita Martinez, were very close.

Then, recently, somebody mentioned this theory to the former at a press conference only to discover that the player appeared to take the implication of camaraderie as an accusation. "She has her friends and I have mine," remarked the normally chirpy 24 year old before quickly changing the subject.

Not so surprising then, that after fighting back from a tricky position against Sabine Applemans to take the match in the third set, Sanchez Vicario opted to skip the chance to watch the efforts of her compatriot against Kimiko Date of Japan.

On court, of course, Martinez has only one true friend - her beloved baseline - and yesterday, given that she couldn't roll it up and carry it about in her pocket, she did the next best thing, she hugged it like some long lost childhood toy for the afternoon.

Having defied the odds on one occasion to win this title, when she beat Martina Navratilova in the 1994 final, it is difficult to be too critical of the Spaniard's tactical approach, but certainly Date benefitted from the knowledge that her higher ranked opponent would not advance upon her too often. Indeed, the Japanese woman fared best when she availed of the opportunity herself.

She dropped the first set to three but grew more daring through the second, which she eventually took in a tiebreak after passing up the chance to level things up on her last service game.

By then, Martinez's game had degenerated into what seemed like chaotic improvisation and Date, a 25 year old whose already solid reputation was greatly enhanced by her defeat of Steffi Graf in the Federation Cup this year, is no stranger to victory over Martinez, who she has beaten on four of their six meetings.

Yesterday, the two exchanged breaks early on, but it was always Martinez who was chasing the match and, in the end, having broken again to love, Date was unfortunate not to end the match in the eighth. But she managed this with little trouble when he held serve to 30 in the ninth.

She played down the importance of the 148 minute victory afterwards, admitting that the win over Graf still meant more. She Went on to concede that, due to her continued discomfort on grass, she would be surprised if she kept progressing. That will make two of them, because the Japanese number one now faces Mary Pierce, who beat Elena Likhovtseva in straight sets, in the quarter finals.

For Martinez, the result - and particularly the manner in which it was achieved - will be looked upon as a lost opportunity. For the two most prominent stars, however, it will make a repeat of last year's final seem all the more inevitable.

On the face of it, neither of the favourites had the most straightforward of tasks with Steffi Graf taking on the rising Swiss star Martina Hingis, while the Spanish number four seed faced the prospect of an opponent who had already exceeded her own expectations for these championships and was now playing like a woman who was really starting to enjoy herself. This one might prove a little tricky for Arantxa Sanchez, and she knew it.

Some people like to make things hard for themselves, though, and fortunately for the woman from Barcelona, Sabine Appelmans is one of them. A natural right hander, the 24 year old nevertheless plays with her left because, apparently, as a child she wanted to be like her best friend. She'll be putting her hand in the fire next.

The Belgian had enjoyed a good first week here and after accounting for Brenda Schulz McCarthy in the third round she had already equalled her best performance in a Grand Slam tournament and produced her longest run at this level in over four years.

Early on it seemed that the world number 28 might surpass; anything she had done before, for there was little question that bye the time she had taken the first set and gone 2-0 up in the second, the outsider was beginning to sense the opportunity of another upset.

Sanchez Vicario, however, remains difficult to convince that she is about to be beaten. Shea proved as much when she broke back in the next game. It was an important breakthrough for Sanchez Vicario.

The former world number one held her own service to level things in the set before the Belgian threw away a tight fifth with a double fault. Then Sanchez, Vicario began to gather pace and it was only as she served for the match, having taken 11 games on the trot, that her shell shocked opponent managed, briefly, to halt the slide.

Applemans delayed what was, by now, the inevitable by breaking serve to stay in the proceedings, and produced two of the set's best shots in the form of two wonderful backhand drop volleys, to take the game from 15-30 to its conclusion.

Holding her own serve proved to be an altogether more tricky proposition, however, and having reached 15-40 she rounded off her sixth defeat at the hands of Sanchez Vicario by twice serving into the net.

Meanwhile, Irish international Claire Curran had an unhappy first day at Wimbledon yesterday when her 6-1, 6-1 first-round defeat by Karolina Jagieniak of France in the junior girls' event was stretched out over six hours because of the rain.

The first interruption to play came with Curran trailing 2-1 in the first set and when they returned after a couple of light showers, Curran's lack of match practice was shown up by the French girl who coasted through the remainder of the set.

She got on little better in the second and eventually faced match point at 40-30 down in the seventh game when play was halted again because of a downpour. Almost two hours later they returned and it took just seven shots for Jagieniak to take the match with a backhand smash at the net.