© Getty Images / G Cole

For the last few years, Mauresmo has been marked out as a woman with the physical attributes and skills to be a Wimbledon champion but, alas, the mental frailties that left her a semi-final bridesmaid rather than a Championship-winning bride. Not just once but on her last three trips to the lawns of the All England Club.

So after the 27-year-old had impressively held her nerve to beat Justine Henin-Hardenne in the ladies' singles final, it was clear she was pleased to have got that particular monkey off her back.

"I don't want anybody to talk about my nerves any more," she told the Centre Court crowd after accepting the Venus Rosewater Dish.

This was the match when Mauresmo finally came good, underlining her merit as world number one and showing she could win a Grand Slam in the heat of combat, rather than by default, as had happened at the Australian Open in January, when the same opponent retired because of illness.

Henin-Hardenne had bounced back from that early-season low point, winning her third French Open in four years last month and bidding to become only the tenth woman in tennis history to capture all four Grand Slams.

The Belgian had promised she would attack. So had Mauresmo. Someone had to give way, and in an opening set in which stroke-making was rendered difficult by a gusting wind, it was Mauresmo who blinked. Broken in the opening game as Henin-Hardenne repeatedly charged the net, Mauresmo found herself a set behind with only half an hour played.

The nervous Mauresmo of old might have folded but the new-look world number one, buoyed by cries from the crowd of "Allez, Amelie" fought back spiritedly, if not always accurately.

In that respect, Mauresmo enjoyed good fortune, since she found herself at times in a decidedly patchy set playing marginally less poorly than Henin-Hardenne, whose forehand went to pieces and whose famous steely resolve went out of the window.

Two breaks of the Belgian serve and then a set-clinching ace did wonders for Mauresmo's resolve, levelling the match with an hour and 21 minutes gone, and putting her in the right, positive frame of mind to march on to glory.

In contrast, Henin-Hardenne never reclaimed her authority of the opening set. Consistency was a stranger as she struggled to contain the athletic tennis for which Mauresmo is rightly famous. It was a losing battle. One break of serve, early on, was all Mauresmo needed to use as a launching pad towards the title.

Serving for the match, crunch time for nerves, was a matter of routine rather than a challenging chore, helped by her seventh and eighth aces, and she was duly crowned as the first lady champion from France since Suzanne Lenglen in 1925, 81 years ago.

First, though, she had a quick weep before climbing up to the VIP box to embrace her coach, Loic Courteau, and then returning to accept, and hold, the Venus Rosewater Dish in the sort of firm grip which indicated that Amelie Mauresmo planned to hold on to it for a long time.