IT WILL not be long before Rafael Nadal is mobbed wherever he goes. His swarthy good looks are a marketing man�s dream, while his bellicose tennis is debunking the myth that Spaniards cannot play on grass. It is a potent combination and, as he gambolled around court like an Andrex puppy attached to a testosterone drip, even the diehard patriots had to pay due homage.

They had come to watch Lee Childs prove that British tennis is not thimble-deep, but left lauding a 17-year-old prodigy who has clearly learnt a thing or two about attitude from Uncle Miguel � the former international footballer and self-styled �beast of Barcelona�.

His 6-2, 6-4, 6-3 victory underscored the dearth of British talent. The buck starts and finishes with the top duo, one of whom, Tim Henman, is a freak in terms of ability, while the other, Greg Rusedski, can scarcely be called home-grown.

Childs passed the baton back to them with unseemly haste, making twice as many unforced errors as his opponent, but he was not aided by the weather turning on him when he was a break up in the third set.

When he re-emerged after the rain delay, he suddenly had the game to match his dishevelled, just-fallen-out-of-bed look and barely won another point.

Yet Childs, twice the national champion but a lowly 487 in world terms, was big enough to acknowledge that Nadal is special. �I thought he was a Spanish guy who would be more comfortable on clay, but he did not seem to worry about the grass,� he said. �I could have played better, but he could easily be in the top 20 by the end of the year.�

Carlos Moy�, the doyen of clay-courters, says Nadal will be in the top ten within two years. �The best I�ve seen,� he said of the world No 77.

Albert Costa, beaten in Monte Carlo in April, probably concurs. The danger will come when the occasional plaudit is drowned in a deluge of hype. Nadal has a man�s game but his mental fortitude is unknown. Childs did not do enough to reveal it yesterday, but it was notable that Nadal did not react well to the slow hand-clapping and cry of �get on with it� that greeted a sluggish change of ends.

But in all other areas, Nadal impressed. He breezed through the first set in 25 minutes, approaching the net with a confidence that is not the norm on the Iberian peninsula, and saved two break points at 4-4 in the second. That was Childs�s chance, a fleeting glimpse at parity that was extinguished by a deft backhand volley. Nadal held and then broke in the next game to move two sets ahead.

To his credit, Childs recovered and was 3-2 ahead when the rain came. It was poor luck for a self-confessed slow starter and when the covers came off, so did the kid gloves. Nadal was once again the Latin swashbuckler whipping heavy top-spin forehands down the lines and pounding his double-fisted backhand.

Childs will now play doubles before returning to the grim wilderness of Challenger tournaments, buoyed by a cheque for �14,090 and the knowledge that he can beat players such as Nikolay Davydenko, the No 33 seed. At 21, he still has time to improve, but the abject nature of his defeat, having twice taken Nadal�s serve in that third set, will cut deep.

The teenage matador admitted that the rain had been a godsend for him and was quick to downplay his chances of planting a banderilla in the latter rounds. �If somebody had said to me before I came here that I�d lose my first-round match in five sets then I�d have taken that,� he said.

Trust a kid to indulge in kidology. His cover of naive youngster learning his trade has been blown. He will surely get better over the next few years, but Nadal is not so much climbing the greasy pole as using it for pole-vaulting purposes.

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