EIGHT days of competition remaining at this year’s Wimbledon and no woman who does not bear the surname Williams, no woman under the age of 34 for that matter, knows what it is like to negotiate them at this tournament and come out a winner in singles play.

That Venus and Serena have claimed the trophy 11 times between them since the older of the siblings won in Millennium year is itself extraordinary, but the way they have managed to keep going through illness, injury and a touch of boredom with it all is placed in context by what has happened to the others.

Maria Sharapova was first to break their stranglehold in 2004 but she is now serving a doping ban and in any case Serena in particular has long had the Russian’s number having beaten her time and again in the intervening years.

Frenchwoman Marion Bartoli’s fine and itself fairly lengthy professional career meanwhile began the same year as that first Venus win at Wimbledon, but it ended with her retirement immediately after she claimed what was her sole Grand Slam win three years ago.

Which left only Petra Kvitova in this year’s draw and, after a stay that was protracted by the weather far more than anything she got the chance to do on court, the two-time winner’s involvement ended at the hands of Russia’s world no.35 Ekaterina Makarova.

As one Twitter user had observed ahead of the match, there was something quite bizarre about the No.10 seed having to wait for the day’s first match on Court No.2 on the middle Saturday to be played in its completion before she got the chance to complete her second round match.

While she was not offering it as an excuse the 26-year-old Czech, who took the title in both 2011 and ’14, admitted it had been a draining week.

“It’s very weird. I felt like I was stuck in the second round for a while this time,” said Kvitova.

“I was waiting all day long, almost every day, to be scheduled on and didn’t really have a chance to finish or step on the court. When you are still waiting and your nerves are still going it’s always a little bit difficult with energy and everything. You just have to focus all day, then maybe when you step on court you don’t really have the energy afterwards.”

In the eyes of many the nature of her week will only serve to reinforce the point made a few days earlier by Venus Williams when saying she did not want preferential treatment as such, but felt that the leading lights in the women’s game should be accorded similar respect to their male counterparts.

That was after the five time champion had been asked to play her opening match on an outside court and it is hard to imagine that there might be an instance where a man who, like Kvitova, had won this tournament twice, would find him sitting in the locker room waiting for the reigning men’s Australian Open champion to come off Court No.2 on the middle Saturday of the tournament, before getting to complete his match.

That, though, was the situation, since the match which preceded her exit was the meeting of Angelique Kerber, who sensationally prevented Serena Williams from matching Steffi Graf’s open era record of 22 Grand Slam wins in Melbourne at the start of the year, with another of her compatriots Carina Witthoeft.

It was a tight affair in the opening set which required a tie-break to separate them before Kerber raced away with the second, 6-1 to wrap things up and she admitted that she, too, had found it difficult to cope with the conditions.

“Honestly, it was not so easy because yesterday our match was cancelled really late and the order of the play came really late (then today on and off. It was tough,” she said.

Kerber claimed not to be looking too far ahead but following the surprise early exit of Garbine Muguruza, last year’s finalist and the new French Open champion, the fourth seed has an obviously enhanced chance of getting through to another Grand Slam final.

In what now looks a very open lower half of the draw Romania’s Simona Halep, who came through what she had anticipated would be a very difficult match against Kiki Bertens of the Netherlands 6-4, 6-3, also has reason to believe she can go the distance having reached the semi-finals two years ago.

“I think I have a stronger game now,” she said.

“I’m more confident now for sure.”

She will now meet another potential contender in Madison Keys, the 21-year-old American ninth seed who served notice of her potential on grass when she won her first tournament on the senior women’s tour at Eastbourne two years ago and, after having to wait through the stop-start drama of waiting for compatriot Sam Querrey to see off Novak Djokovic she at least got a clear run with the weather in coming through a tough third round battle with Alize Cornet of France 6-4, 5-7, 6-2.