Wimbledon '97: Court circular: Coetzer gets licence for service game

The drinks will be on Amanda Coetzer if she accelerates her remarkable improvement this year into a victory celebration on Saturday week. What's more, the diminutive South African will quite probably serve you a glass of something bubbly and refreshing herself.

Should Miss Coetzer's tennis career suddenly suffer a collapse - an unlikely prospect given the stranglehold that she has established over Steffi Graf with three crushing defeats in 1997 - then an alternate, if unlikely, pursuit as a bartender awaits her.

Her serving - the kind carried out with a tray, not a racket - was seen to particularly good effect at the Lipton Championships and again at the Bausch and Lomb Championships at Amelia Island.

"She served over 50 cases of Michelob and Michelob Light", Debbi Edwards of the Corel WTA Tour said, "and really worked hard. She even personally delivered a tub of ice and beers to the press room.

"At the Lipton event, she helped out at a party given by the sponsors, Bacardi. Some people did not realise who it was and it was quite funny to see them ordering her around for another dash of lime."

The Coetzer sideline began last year at the Oklahoma WTA tour event where, along with some minor league ice hockey players, she went behind the bar to raise money for charity. She first had to obtain a licence and having secured one, she is determined to make good use of it.