non-alcoholic refreshment at this week's XL Open.

The cost for your quick fix of instant caffeine -- served and stirred by yourself, of course -- is actually only $2 (just twice what you might pay for a cup of the real stuff at most places on the Island).

But the snag, for the second year running, is that you can only get a cup if you first purchase a book of food and drink tokens for $12.

If you've already had a good breakfast and don't want anything to eat, you're quite literally stuffed.

And if you are a bit peckish, you could still find yourself stumping up $6 for a hot dog and fries, $7 for a sandwich or a hamburger and $8 if you want a dollop of cheese on said burger.

Makes Wimbledon's traditionally expensive strawberries and cream seem a bargain by comparison. Our advice is get out the flask and the tupperware, butter your own bread and embark on an undercover operation to sneak the lot into the ground. Then beware the Coral Beach food police on the lookout for people enjoying home-made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Alternatively, you could always sneak down to the restaurant at the nearby Paraquet where they'll serve you a couple of sausages, eggs, toast and unlimited real coffee for about $6.

*** ARGENTINA'S popular purple-haired Marcelo Charpentier was on the receiving end of some spontaneous Bermudian hospitality when he flew in last week.

He arrived at the airport a day earlier than the date from which his accommodation at the Sonesta was booked and paid for, but found a Good Samaritan in the form of a local woman who was at the airport to collect a friend.

Recognising him from his fine performances last year, when an ankle injury forced him out, she immediately offered him a place to stay for the night.

The problem? She has only a one-bedroom apartment. So the 220th ranked player was forced to make do with the couch. Not that he seemed to mind. "She was very friendly,'' he said of his temporary landlady yesterday. "I was very comfortable there.'' *** DOUG FLACH knows more about the ups and downs of tennis than most pros.

The younger brother of former doubles star Ken is on the Island trying to win points to boost his ATP tour ranking back to close to its best of four years ago.

Then, in March 1994, he had reached 108, but by the end of that year had slumped to 204. The following year things got worse and he started 1996 down at 641.

He returned to Satellite level -- about as low as you can go on the circuit.

But he turned things round and back up at 281 he qualified for Wimbledon where he pulled off the most memorable win of his career, beating number three seed Andre Agassi in the first round.

He won a wild card to the US Open, reached the second round and finished the year at 150.

Now, back down at 225, the softly-spoken native of Missouri, still only 27, admits that the circuit can be less glamorous than it may appear from the outside. So while new world number one Marcelo Rios took home a cool $1,017,118 in winnings for the first three months of the year and even someone as low as Zimbabwe's Byron Black, a Bermuda Open competitor last year and now ranked 57, has picked up more than $85,000, Flach has had to be content with modest earnings of just over $9,000.

But he takes the long-term view.

"The tough thing about tennis is you have to win to make money and you have to win to get your ranking up,'' he says. "But it's a long year and there are a lot of tournaments, so you just have to look at it on a long-term basis.''