Jul 6, 2008, 11:13 GMT
London - One junior Wimbledon title from 14-year-old 'local' Laura Robson was enough to get the British press touting the nation's next big tennis hope.
With Andy Murray now reduced to a mere afterthought, the young winner's most pressing assignment after lifting the first British junior title since Amanda Croft in 1984 was finding a dress for the Wimbledon ball.
Robson, daughter of an international oil company executive, was born in Melbourne and lived for four years in Singapore before the family returned to Britain when she was six.
Asked by a hopeful antipodean if she felt the slightest bit Aussie, Robson had a short answer: 'No, not really,'
The teenager lives around the corner from the All England club, studies by correspondence and also insists she gets no pocket money while remaining unfazed by her new-found star billing.
Robson's major worry was getting fitted for her ball gown as well as trying to scratch up a date for the traditional ending gala.
She had expressed a schoolgirl dream of attending with 28-year-old Marat Safin, who wisely let her down easy with a note of good luck before the junior final.
'Marat sent me a letter. He said he was sorry he can't go the ball but wished me good luck for the final. I don't know who I'll take now he's out of the picture,' she said.
'If someone had told me before Wimbledon that I would win the title, I'd have said they were stupid,' said the champion.
************************** NOTEBOOK: Home ties fleeting for major players in Wimbledon defeat =
London (dpa) - Wimbledon finalist Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal may have gotten their money's worth on elite-level home rentals during the tennis fortnight, but that's not the case for other stars who lost early.
The grass-court Grand Slam produces a financial field day for some local homeowners, who are able to vacate and rent out luxury dwellings within walking distant of the club for 'loadsamoney.'
Costs range from a modest 1,500 sterling (3,000 dollars) per week to 8,000 (16,000 dollars) for a six-bedroom place overlooking Wimbledon Common.
Well-paid megastars always take high-end dwellings - but none usually hang around for more than a day after exiting the tournament.
That's what happened at this edition to the likes of Novak Djokovic, Ana Ivanovic and Maria Sharapova, who still had to pay the full rate for time booked.
One former ace who gave up a rental with a view of Wimbledon's front entrance drive was Martina Navratilova, who chose to live in a Chelsea hotel to be closer to an art exhibition featuring her work.
The over-50 star has helped pioneered a lucrative form of modern painting where she fires pained tennis balls at a canvas.
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