I wonder what it is like to wake up and find that you have turned into a sex god. I'd love to find out. Chris Eaton already has, and that's just one of the extraordinary things that has happened to him this week. It must be the exact opposite of the character in Kafka who wakes up to find that he has turned into a monstrous insect.

Eaton marched on to No1 Court yesterday and it was as if the Beatles had arrived and we were back in the Sixties. Waaaah! Chris! Waaah! The place was alight with love, and lust as well. Lust for victory and lust of the more usual kind. Eaton managed to look as if it was the sort of thing that happens to him every day: ah, yes, girls sobbing with desire, must be Thursday.

Just think, hardly anyone had heard of him until Tuesday. Then he had a wonderful win over Boris Pashanski, one that was not even shown on telly - well, how's the Beeb to know that a Brit winning at Wimbledon is a good story? So his world ranking has become the magic number of the tournament: 661, a mere 628 places behind his opponent of yesterday, Dmitry Tursunov, a Russian of very decent standard.

It was, I suppose, the worst kind of opponent - one with a bit of nous and court craft and case-hardened, competitive nerve. But Eaton came out - waaah! - blasting and did his damnedest, and you cannot ask for more, unless you were the girl two rows in front of me, who did. Tursunov kept it all together, despite a terrific start from Eaton, and ran out a 7-6, 6-2, 6-4 winner.

Tursunov, 25, is five years older, has won four titles and has enough about him to give most players trouble. So let us salute him generously before turning back to our new boy and wondering whether he is the real deal. Perhaps he is; he certainly had a fair amount of fun in the gloaming yesterday evening.

He is a big lad and still walks with a kind of amiable oafish teenager slouch, as if he is not quite at home yet in his prodigious body. But he gives the ball a fair old tap and seems to like it when an entire nation is looking at him - never a bad thing for a tennis player. He is a good-looking lad, in a dark and bristly, bulky sort of way - certainly anyone who thought otherwise was in a minority. Chris! Chris! Oh Chris!

He began his first service game with a double fault and you feared the worst - it's a big deal being on telly and on No1 Court and being a newly hatched sex god and all. But then he found the range and his nerve and started to surf the wave of public enthusiasm as he served for his life in the first set.

So let us not dwell on the callow errors, the trying-too-hard groundstrokes that went wildly long, the vulnerability to the wiliness and movement of his opponent. Let us rather cheer for the good bits: a great worm-killer of a serve and a love of the volley, great lunging put-aways, a general love of lording it at the net and daring his opponent to try to get past. He is aware that he can be an intimidating sight and did his best to chivvy and bully an opponent who has seen most things but has not often met a hulking serve-and-volleying sex god in front of his own people and all flush with the excitement of sudden fame.

Eaton had the crowd with him, sighing in unison at his unforced errors, cheering his aces, gasping with rapidly swallowed pleasure at his opponent's double faults. He took the first set to a tie-break, but life then began to get ever so slightly real. He was pressing too hard, but what other option was available to him? By the time the second set was done he was looking overwhelmed - a dream was dying on its feet. So it goes.

They have a saying in Chicago, Mr Bond, Goldfinger said. The first time is happenstance, the second time is coincidence, the third time is enemy action. Eaton's first match was the happenstance, this gutsy effort yesterday was the coincidence. For enemy action we will have to wait.

Eaton goes back to the obscurity of the triple-digit tennis player, having learnt that hard work and firm desire can bring the most amazing things. He knows that he has an aggressive game that looks at home on a Wimbledon show court and also, of course, that he is a sex god.

I do not know if he is going to train on and win Wimbledon, but I do know that the desire for a hero at Wimbledon is extraordinary and that anyone who can play the part, even for a day, will get a fair amount of adoration.

Tim Henman was never a sex god and I do not think Andy Murray qualifies either. But when the right sort of chap comes along, the nation is ready. There was something ever-so-slightly silly about all the fuss, in the end. But never mind, we all had a lovely day out. And you never know what might happen when the enemy action begins.