KEY POINTS:
Serena Williams has taken women's tennis forward in some respects, and backwards in others.
The Australian Open in Melbourne may mark the first occasion in which it was claimed a player's supporter, the player being Williams, distracted an opponent by shining a watch in her eyes. The claim
was made by a commentator, who endured the subsequent glare of publicity with no support at all from Williams' opponent.
Never mind. It is almost certainly the most memorable tournament in which a player has shone a dress in opponents' eyes.
Screaming Green screamed past the Scream Queen in the women's final, where Williams destroyed Maria Sharapova, the new World No 1, from the lofty height of a pre-tournament ranking of 81. Williams won in just an hour and three minutes.
Dressed, partly it has to be said, in luminous lime, Williams proved again that tournaments are there for her taking. Men's tennis is being overwhelmed by grace while the women's game explodes in clunky power.
Like Hitchcock films which gnaw at your senses from go to whoa, there is a nerve-jangling mix of fear and thrill when watching Roger Federer, knowing that you may be witnessing tennis as good as it has ever been, and will ever get.
Federer is wood and Woods-like, in the tennis era he evokes and the golf player he mirrors.
For the first time since every kid's favourite air guitar turned into heavy-hitting metal, the game has reclaimed the grace that oldtimers remember and the rest of us have seen on film that reveals players in white gliding on moss and wielding fine timber.
Against Andy Roddick's rocket launcher serves in the third game of the second set in their semifinal, Federer dismantled the American's game with the most gorgeous shots and planning you might ever see, as he won to love. A very good player was left bankrupt by the receiver.
Federer has a charm which extends everywhere, including a modesty devoid of the contrivances that stud professional sport. He has married tennis power and artistry to the point that it may not be able to go any further.
He is so far ahead of his field that it has become difficult to properly judge the merits of opponents, who rather than forging serious rivalries with the Swiss master, are being trampled into the tennis history footnotes.
Williams also did her share of trampling last week, and she has now won eight Grand Slam singles titles which scrapes her on to the top-10 leaderboard, which is led by Australian Margaret Court on 24.
The fascination with Williams - and to a lesser extent nowadays with her older sister Venus - can centre on her personality at the expense of the tennis.
Rather than pour beads of sweat on to the court, she actually poured beads - of the hair-holding variety - on to it once. She turned up at Melbourne last week with what looked from afar like cymbals dangling from the ears. What next? Glockenspiels?
Williams blows hot and cold, lacking the relentless tenacity and spirit of champions through the ages. She may turn up, or she may turn it up.
Her presence, and triumphs, hint at where women's tennis may get to, rather than where it has been. Surely, a player or players will emerge with not only her brute force but also the guile of Martina Hingis, the heart of Chris Evert, the athleticism of Martina Navratilova to take women's tennis to a brilliant new place.
There are times, in witnessing Williams, when you feel you are most definitely watching the world No 81 - the men's 81 that is. Accolades tumbled towards Williams, who is returning from a knee injury, but women's power tennis can look like bad men's tennis.
Left to more lithe beings such as Sharapova, the women's game contains itself within borders where it thrills at its own particular level. But plant more muscular figures such as Williams there, and it can appear worse (to some eyes) even though it is being played better.
Michelle Wie has downgraded women's golf because her disastrous foray into men's tournaments has highlighted the gap between the sexes. Likewise, Serena Williams has shown that relatively unskilled and cumbersome power can obliterate the next best. Williams lacks the subtleties, the touches, the elegance which always serves tennis so well and takes the breath away, as Federer does.
It would be no surprise at all if Williams disappeared back into the world of her sponsor-emblazoned handbag, to emerge as a winner again only when she has the rub of the green.
Melbourne in 2007 was not the first time in which you might ask of women's tennis whether what catches the eye is obscuring reality, as Sharapova hardly tested a limited opponent who was underdone, and returning from surgery.
A British newspaper once asked "How sick can a sport be when it depends on a dressmaker to solve its problems?" in reaction to Ted Tingling, the famous tennis dresser.
Tingling had a varied career in tennis, including in his teenage years when he assisted the French legend of the early 1900s Suzanne Lenglen, who like the Williams sisters was pressed forward by a determined father.
Lenglen, an Olympic champion and winner of 12 grand slam singles, brought women's tennis to the attention of the masses through her glamour and brilliance. She was prepared to shock by wearing a dress that rose to her mid-calf, and was flamboyant by any standards, oh yes. She would even drink cognac during the changeovers. So Serena Williams is not a historical novelty even if she is the most fascinating sight in the women's game today.
Low
An Australian Open women's tennis final that lacked class.
High
One last old-fashioned summer weekend before rugby descends with indecent haste.