When you are younger you see somebody who is 30 and you think

When you are younger you see somebody who is 30 and you think `Oh God, she's old, why is she still playing?' But once you get there you change your mind. Numbers aren't as important any more, it's how you feel inside."How she currently feels inside can be summed up in a word: brilliant Then chuck in another word: confident. To win the French Open for a sixth time Steffi became the first woman in the Open era to defeat the world's top three players in the same event, Hingis, Davenport and Seles. "Ever since my knee operation my career has been up and down," she said "At the beginning of this year things didn't go so well I've had some good times, some strange times It's been a difficult road. Now I've been able to turn things around again, it has been incredible."On her Wimbledon debut in 1985 aged 15, Graf got as far as the fourth round before losing to a certain Jo Durie. Fifteen years on, at her most successful as well as her favourite tournament, Steffi will present herself again for public examination, possibly for the last time.

Those privileged to see her play will be watching one of the game's greats, a woman who reigned as number one for a record (men as well as women) 186 consecutive weeks, who was top of her trade for 377 weeks, also an all-gender record. She is right up there with Lenglen, Wills Moody, BJK, Connolly, Evert and Navratilova.Now, at three in the rankings, Steffi Graf has sweated and strained - and wept quite a bit, too - as she clambered back to her best level since she was last number one, in March 1997 It has all been done with the next two weeks in mind In Paris the crowd carried her to victory. At Wimbledon the support will be less raucous but there will be no doubting which player the spectators want to see thrusting aloft that golden tray.. Twenty-year-old Monica Jones has five assorted pairs of Dr Martens boots and shoes back home in the States Yet she's in Covent Garden, London, to buy a sixth.

She's also buying a pair each for her sister and a cousin in St Louis. Her brother Brad, 18, is buying a pair "to order" for his girlfriend, and their friend John Zumwalt, 21, is buying his third pair. An absent friend had wanted to get a pair emblazoned with the Union Jack, but they didn't have his size. He was told he might get them in Carnaby Street and he took off, clutching an A-Z. To my right a gaggle of American girls debate the new open-toed sandal. Upstairs, a moody adolescent Spanish boy persuades his mother of the virtues of what worryingly looks like a pair of jackboots.

On the top floor a stylish thirtysomething French couple buy sensible shoes for their toddler. For teens on the tourist trail, a trip to the four-storey Dr Martens flagship store in Covent Garden is as much a part of "doing London, England" as the Tower of London, Madame Tussauds and the changing of the guard. (This, despite a lawsuit from US firm Sketchers last week, claiming that Dr Martens are as much made in Thailand as "Made in England" - the tag proudly stamped on each boot, next to a Union Jack.)From Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles to Metrojaya in Kuala Lumpur Dr Martens is branded as the sine qua non of British youth footwear (simply translated in today's parlance as "without which no British teen would be seen dead"). Dr Martens is not selling anything as mundane as shoes - it's flogging a slice of British youth culture.And here's the rub. The truth is that at home on the streets of Britain, plugged-in teens don't give a monkeys.