On his first appearance since accomplishing 'La Decima' at Roland Garros, Rafael Nadal avoided what would have been a distressing Wimbledon quintuple.
Nadal beating the world No.137 in the first round of a major shouldn't really be high on the tournament's news agenda. But, at Wimbledon, it truly is, with the Majorcan taking the opportunity to record a lopsided 6-1, 6-3, 6-2 win over Australia's John Millman on a sunny, open-top No.1 Court.
Just three weeks after Nadal won a tenth French Open to become the first man or woman to reach double figures at the same Grand Slam, another extraordinary number was on the line.
Losing to Millman would have meant that Nadal's last five visits to the All England Club would have ended with defeat to an opponent with a triple-digit ranking.
Of the four big beasts in the men's game, Nadal has often been the one most vulnerable to defeat in the early stages of The Championships, and that risk was only accentuated by his absence last summer because of a wrist injury.
But, playing his first grass court match for a couple of years, the 2008 and 2010 champion produced some wonderfully aggressive tennis, including some particularly vicious forehands, to drop just six games.
In many ways, despite the switch of surfaces, this was a continuation of the 'mean' Nadal in Paris, where he conceded only 35 games over the course of the fortnight.
It was also a long distance from the Nadal who was stopped by Lukas Rosol in the second round of the 2012 Championships, or the version who lost to Steve Darcis in the opening round in 2013, or to Nick Kyrgios in a fourth-round match in 2014, or to Dustin Brown in the second round in 2015.
Travelling from Paris to London is one of the easiest trips of the year for an elite tennis player, a journey that can be done by train. But it's also one of the most significant ones, with the switch from clay to grass at the Slams.
You might say that Nadal is at once the best and the worst at making that transition. The best because twice already in his career he has won Roland Garros and Wimbledon in the same season, and if he does so again he will put himself level with Bjorn Borg's record.
And the worst because, for all his glory in France, he hasn't had anything like the same success in London (though, of course, many players wouldn't mind already having a couple of Wimbledon titles).
Next for Nadal is Donald Young, of the United States. As Nadal says, if he can get through the early rounds, "anything can happen". Nadal hasn't played in a Wimbledon final for six years and is surely overdue a run here.
If the fifth set of January's Australian Open final against Roger Federer had played out a little differently, Nadal might now be halfway to the calendar-year Grand Slam. But even with defeat in Melbourne, Nadal has already had a fine year. But for the resurgence of Federer, the Rejuvenated Rafa would be 'the' story of 2017 so far.
