Britain lost its first Wimbledon hopeful from the Championships today, even before any play had started on the show courts.
Elena Baltacha lost to Flavia Pennetta in just one hour and 14 minutes.
The 29-year-old lost 6-4, 6-1 to the Italian, ending this year's Wimbledon dream.
Baltacha had reached the second round at Wimbledon for the last two years but failed to reach the same spot this year.
The Scot's loss came before reigning men's champion Roger Federer had even taken to Centre Court to begin his title defence, in the first match of the day.
Meanwhile, Samantha Murray's first taste of Wimbledon was a short and sharp one as she was also sent packing in the first round, by Camila Giorgi.
Murray, who is the British number seven and comes from Hale in Manchester, was not disgraced as she went down 6-3 6-4 to her Italian opponent, but ultimately did not have enough to make a major impression.
With a typically partisan support on Court 10, Murray actually out-served Giorgi on the aces front and hit as many winners as her, but too many unforced errors proved to be her undoing.
She dropped the first set in 35 minutes and was made to regret a missed break point, with Giorgi able to have the luxury of making slip-ups on key points.
Murray more than held her own at the start of the second set and forced Giorgi to hit long and wide on more than one occasion in a lengthy second game, but once she was broken again in the third there was no way back.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article