That was then, this is now, the post-Cold War era. Hewitt and Tomic played two amiable tie-breakers — both won by Tomic 7-5 — and afterwards they dissected Tomic's first round opponent, American Sam Querrey, whom Hewitt beat last week at Queen's. Between the camps, the only mention of tension was in a discussion between Roche and Tomic about racquets.

"If I could take Lleyton as a coach, I would, any time," said Tomic. "He's a nice guy. I've got to know him really well the last few years. He helps me a lot when I play guys I haven't played. He's been around a long time now."

In fact, Hewitt won Wimbledon before Roger Federer won this or any of his 17 major championships. Celebrating the 10th anniversary of his breakthrough here, Federer cited Hewitt as one of the players who led change in the way the game was played. In his time, playing surfaces had slowed until even grass was indistinguishable from the rest, said Federer, and watching Hewitt taught him that to succeed, he had to improve his baseline game.

Federer's reflections were not without wistfulness. "Now you can just play the same game on clay, on grass, on hard courts," he said. "That was not really the idea about having different surfaces in the first place." Outside, the lawnmowers buzzed, at least setting Wimbledon apart aurally.

This is the history, and Hewitt's place in it, of which Tomic appeared insolently unaware when he and his camp disdained to hit with Hewitt here in 2009. Much water has flowed beneath the bridge since, and at last, perhaps, it is beginning to abrade the rough edges. It is not before time. At 20, Tomic regards three wins in a row as major. At 20, Hewitt won a major.

Federer, in his reigning titleholder's state of the nation address, also made mention of Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov. The context was backhands; Federer noted sentimentally that Dimitrov was one of a diminishing number of players who, like he, preferred to hit the shot one-handed.

But this was not the first time Dimitrov and backhanders had entered the pre-Wimbledon discourse, nor the most explosive. As the beau of Maria Sharapova and rumoured former boyfriend of Serena Williams, Dimitrov's name had become collateral in an wincing exchange between the pair that makes Roche's low blow seem no worse than a tummy tickle.

It began with an insensitive aside by Williams about a gang rape victim and escalated into a slanging match about their love lives, all this less than a fortnight after Williams thrashed Sharapova in the French Open final. It was all the more remarkable because Williams has a history of faux pas, but Sharapova chooses her words as precisely as her costumes, her routines and her shots.

Wimbledon doesn't like unmentionables of any kind. Its media protocols specifically prohibit non-tennis questions, and pledge support to an offended player who chooses to walk out of an interview. Wimbledon looks like a fortress, and its functionaries dress like troopers. When Williams took her turn on the titleholders throne, the redactors were at the ready.

But Williams revealed that she had offered Sharapova an olive branch and that she believed it had been accepted. "It's so important to know all the facts before you make a comment or before you make an assumption," she said. "That's something I'm still learning. That being said, I've been in the business for a little over 200 years, so I should definitely, definitely know better."

But, being Serena, she delivered two more whacks anyway. One was at tame tennis media, who, she implied, never confronted her with such thorny questions. "You guys have completely spoiled me," she said.

The other was again at Sharapova, who had curtly advised Williams to stick to tennis. "That is one thing I can definitely take her advice on," said Williams. "Maybe I wasn't focused enough in the past on tennis." But her snort of laughter made clear that possibly the greatest woman player in history thought the idea of herself as some sort of tennis-playing dilettante was absurd.

Then, suddenly weary of the intrigue, she quite innocently hit upon a truth about herself that applies also to Tomic, and Hewitt, and even the sage-like Federer, and — as a groundsman touched up the the gold letttering on the gates of the All-England Lawn Tennis Club — put Wimbledon into blessed perspective.

"There's one thing I'm really good at," she said, "and that's hitting the ball over a net in a box. I'm excellent on that. And that's what I'm going to continue to do while I can."