Simona halep out into #1round #australianopen2016 .

We like Ian Cohen. Really, we do. He is a nice bloke, a good pro and he is the man in charge of the microphone at Margaret Court Arena.

But on Tuesday night, any casual observer would have thought that he was the interrogator from hell, a tormentor so fierce as to make the Spanish Inquisition look like a litter of fluffy kittens. And all he asked Zhang Shuai after her opening match was: “This is your first Grand Slam win, tell us how you did it?” Well, that was it. Zhang was in floods of tears. Then again, so was her coach, Liu Shuo. He, poor fella, was so overcome, he had to be comforted by the punters sitting around him.

Zhang, you see, had just beaten Simona Halep 6-4 6-3. That was a story in itself – the world No.133 dusting the world No.2 in straight sets in the first round of Australian Open 2016. But that was not what had reduced Zhang to a gibbering wreck. No, our heroine had spent the last nine years schlepping around the Grand Slam circuit while failing to win a match. She had made her way into a main draw 14 times and never once got a sniff of a win. She had not won so much as a set in the majors since Wimbledon 2011.