LONDON -- It's been a rather tame tabloid fortnight at the All-England Club so far. No axe murders, drug busts or sexual trysts to enlighten the scene for those reporters interested in the really significant events at the world's most prestigious tournament, those distinguished gents known as the "Beastie Boys."

Oh, they had rounded up the usual suspects -- VENUS IN TEARS OVER CASH SLUR (The Star) ... TARANGO: DELGADO IS A ONE SHOT WONDER WHO ONLY BEATS RETARDS (The Mirror) ... GORAN'S GIVEN ME 8 HIDINGS BUT I'LL GET HIM, SAYS GREG (The Sun) ... GAME, SEX AND MATCH TO THE MODEL GIRLS (in the normally staid broadsheet, The Times) -- but there'd been no truly terrific tab tornado for the Beasties to sink their teeth into. Until Saturday.

Until The Mirror went after Jelena Dokic. Or rather Jelena Dokic's father, Damir.

Actually, the preceding days had been full of some fabulous foreplay -- what with The Daily Mail reprinting a color magazine photograph of 18-year-old Dokic posing seductively bare-midriffed, with her waist-length hair flowing over a clinging two-piece skirt-and-top outfit. Dokic had rebuked the tour's "glamour girls" for concentrating more on their looks than their tennis skills. So the newspaper asked in a screaming headline: CAN THIS BE THE GIRL ATTACKING PLAYERS WHO PUT MODELLING BEFORE TENNIS? Moreover, after Dokic pere began puffing on his pipe during his daughter's first round victory over Rosana de los Rios (no relation to Rosana de los Danadana) and after security swooped in and made him put out the pipe, The Sun chimed in with: DOKIC DAD MAKES AN ASH OUT OF IT.

But those were merely prelims.

Alert memorabilians will recall the bulky, bearded Dokic -- who resembles Al Hirt on eternal enemas -- as the somewhat eccentric, usually inebriated fellow who emigrated from his native Serbia with his family to Australia in 1994 and has made a career of sliming the Slams pretty much ever since. Australia: He grabbed a photographer by the throat and snatched a microphone from a TV reporter. U.S. Open: Complaining about the price of salmon in the players' restaurant, he threw a plate of the seafood at a waiter. Wimbledon, 2000: He launched into a boozy rant against the British monarchy, smashed a journalist's cell phone and was escorted to a holding cell before being thrown off the premises. Following some other tournament escapades such as calling officials "Nazis" and lying down in traffic, which led to another arrest, Dokic was banned from the tour for six months by the WTA.

Not that this has held back his swiftly-maturing daughter, who famously upset world No. 1 Martina Hingis at Wimbledon two years ago, reached the semifinals here last summer and won the Italian Open in May. Having renounced her adopted Australia to play Fed Cup for Yugoslavia, Jelena is not only the 14th seed at this year's Big W but also growing into a major beauty. When she played the foxalicious Barbara Schett, 25, in the third round on Saturday, tournament officials realized they had the next best thing to the (absentee) Anna Kournikova Babe Show and threw the match right out there on show Court Number One.

That's just about all The Mirror needed. On Saturday morning the tabloid previewed the event: BABSI V THE BEAST, referring to Schett versus Damir Dokic, in an article accompanied by a "tale of the tape" listing among other things their age ("25 ... 42"), build ("willowy ... stocky"), temperament ("sweet natured ... Bolshy"), lifestyle ("clean living, lots of fresh air ... smokes a pipe and likes a drink") and best moment ("beating Wimbledon champ Venus Williams last month ... none").

As if waking up to that wasn't enough, Dokic the daughter was further enraged by Wimbledon's official transport -- the chauffeured cars sent to the players' rented residences in and around Wimbledon village -- which failed to pick her up at her house. Having to hail a taxi, which got her to the club just before her match, Dokic took out her frustrations on Schett, defeating her, 6-3, 7-5. Then she really started blasting winners.

"If you really can't organize something like that [transportation]," Dokic said, "you can't run a tournament. It was very hard to go out there and play like that. I tried calling the tournament director, but ... I think it wasn't a very nice thing." Had this happened to her before? "Yeah, a couple of years ago," Dokic said. "At the Australian Open, actually. Maybe it's just me, it happens everywhere, God. What happened this morning wasn't a very nice thing."

And she hadn't even gotten to The Mirror yet.

"That [the article] sort of stood me up. It was a really nasty article about my dad. It's really not funny anymore. Like my dad was gonna try and psych Barbara out on the side of the court. I mean, it's crazy.

"I also don't think it was the news," Dokic said. "I mean, the newspapers that Barbara was advertising." [Schett was being paid to do a brace of first-person articles for The Mirror.] "I think also my management company, Octagon, Ivan Brixi, the guy I work with, did a very poor job. We [she and Schett] are both from the same management company, playing the same match. [All that] didn't need to be there. ... It was just horrendous.

"I have no trouble with the people on the tour," Dokic said. "It's just a few outsiders that you get. I mean, I did nothing to stir this up. Neither did my dad. I don't think it's acceptable. ... This is as bad as it could get."

Really? Let's see. Counting severed heads, that makes her opponent, her agent, the tournament and the tabloids that Jelena lipped off and laid out. Inasmuch as she's still got plenty of face time left -- Dokic plays Lindsay Davenport in the next round and she's still alive in both doubles events, paired with Conchita Martinez and (we are not making this up) the Wimbledon terrorist himself, Jeff Tarango -- nobody should bet it won't get much worse.

The Beastie Boys are already licking their chops.

Curry Kirkpatrick is covering Wimbledon for ESPN The Magazine, E-mail him at curry.kirkpatrick@espnmag.com.