Should you have been travelling to SW19 on Monday and should you have been in possession of a pair of Centre Court tickets, you might suddenly have come over all of a fluster. As you perused the excellent Wimbledon app, you will have seen on the order of play something to make your heart sing.

“Mavis! Look!” you might have cried out to your travelling companion. “We’ve got Novak then Venus and then… Sinner against Cerundolo! That should be a cracker!”

Alas, it would have been no more than the giddy excitement of first day fever. Yes, Sinner, the world No.8, was taking on Argentina’s Cerundolo. But not that Cerundolo. Not Francisco Cerundolo, the world No.19 and the champion of Eastbourne last week. That would, indeed, have been a cracker – and it would have been impossible as this is the first round and both men are highly seeded.

No, Jannik Sinner was taking on Juan Manuel Cerundolo of Argentina, the world No.111 and the younger brother of Francisco.

As it turned out, the match was a cracker – but only if you were of an Italian persuasion (Sinner won 6-2, 6-2, 6-2) – but it was not quite what you might have been expecting. Sinner was as good as he needed to be and poor Cerundolo, quite simply, wasn’t.

“It means a lot playing on this special court,” Sinner said. “Physically, I feel very well. We have been working very hard in practice, and today the level was great. It’s never easy playing the first round, especially against a lefty. I have such great memories of playing on this court from last year, so this means a lot.”

At the age of 21, Juan Manuel is three years younger than his brother; he is also an inch shorter and 9lbs slimmer. He is what you might call Francisco-Lite. And he has one tour title (Cordoba two years ago) to his brother’s two.

That said, he is making hay on the Challenger circuit, winning two titles this year on clay back in Argentina. But that is the problem: Juan Manuel is a clay court man by trade. His game is as suited to a grass court as a giraffe is suited to roller skates. Not that there is anything wrong with the basic design of giraffes, you understand; it is just that they are just not made for wheels.

Neither is Juan Manuel and just to make matters worse, this was only the third grass court match of his career. And he was up against last year’s quarter-finalist, the one who took the first two sets from Novak Djokovic before losing in five.

No wonder, then, that Juan Manuel stopped for a quick comfort break before they headed out on to the hallowed Centre Court. It seemed that our friend from Buenos Aires was a little nervous. He had cause to be, too: after losing the toss, he was made to serve first and in 11 minutes, he was two breaks down. This was not a great start.

What soon became apparent was that Sinner, although not a grass court specialist, moved better on the lush surface, he served better and, all round, he had far too many weapons at his disposal for Cerundolo to cope with. Juan Manuel’s best hope was that he could keep the ball on his lefty forehand and then wallop it, his forehand being a good walloping sort of shot.

After 18 minutes, it earned Cerundolo his first game but it was asking an awful lot for him to make a decent fist of the evening’s match with so few tools. If he tried to trade blows with Sinner from the baseline, it did not end well for him, but to mix things up required a skillset that he either did not have or was too nervous and inexperienced to use. Either way, he could only watch as the Italian ran away with the first set.

Now when it comes to forehands, Mr Sinner’s is none too shabby either. If the shot is Cerundolo’s favourite, it is just one of the No.8’s preferred methods of attack. But when Cerundolo left the ball sitting nicely in Sinner’s strike zone with a little note attached saying “hit me; hit me now”, the Italian could not resist. With a couple of them, he broke early in the second set and set off at a canter towards the third with less than an hour on the clock. 

Sure enough, the final set followed the pattern of the first two and after 90 minutes Sinner had booked his place in the second round and a meeting with another Argentinian: Diego Schwartzman. 

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