Li Na admitted she was relieved to get back to winning ways at Wimbledon after cracking under the pressure of challenging for the French Open title.
As a former champion at Roland Garros, where she became the first Asian to win a Grand Slam singles title in 2011, China’s Li was desperate to make a strong bid to regain the trophy in Paris this year.
But the 32-year-old, who had won the Australian Open just months earlier, crashed to a first-round defeat against Kristina Mladenovic.
It was Li’s worst Grand Slam performance since 2011, when she bowed out of the US Open at the same stage, and she responded by taking several weeks off.
Revitalised by her holiday, the two-time Grand Slam champion made a solid start to her Wimbledon campaign with a 7-5, 6-2 win over Polish qualifier Paula Kania on Monday
“I feel pretty good. After a vacation I feel fresh because during the French Open I could feel the pressure was there. I couldn’t handle it anymore,” Li said.
“If you have a high ranking, you always wish you can do well. Also another player, if they play against you, for them it is nothing to lose. So they just try to play their best.
“In the beginning I was a bit shaky because I hadn’t played her before and she was using my power against me, so I was really happy to win in the end.
“For me, I was feeling, even coming into the claycourt season, already I was missing something.
“Especially when I came to Paris, I really wished I could do well. So maybe I put a lot of pressure on myself.
“I needed to take a vacation to think about what I should do in the future. And also the racquets, they need a vacation as well. They cannot see me every day.”
World No 2 Li will face Austria’s Yvonne Meusburger, who beat American Vania King, in the second round as she looks to get past the Wimbledon quarter-finals for the first time.
But she admits the quick transition from clay to grass has made it difficult for her to emulate her other Grand Slam successes at Wimbledon.
“I never think I can play well on the grass court. For me it’s tough. I think for everyone it’s tough because we play on the grass for only one month in the whole year,” she said.
“It’s pretty close from the French Open to Wimbledon, only two weeks. So it’s very tough for me to change the surface.”
Kania, ranked 183rd, had never before played a WTA Tour-level match, let alone appeared at a Grand Slam. The 21-year-old showed few signs of being overawed and broke Li in the first game.
But Li finally began to take control just in the nick of time, breaking Kania as she served for the set at 5-4 and then again two games later to snatch the set.
The reigning Australian Open champion finished the job comfortably after surging into a 5-1 lead in the second set.
Former world No 1 Victoria Azarenka, meanwhile, won her first match since January as the eighth seed triumphed 6-3, 7-5 against Croatia’s Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, who was a semi-finalist back in 1999.
The former Australian Open champion has been plagued by a left foot injury which kept her off tour from Indian Wells in March to Eastbourne last week where she lost her opener to Camila Giorgi.
Azarenka now goes on to face Serbia’s Bojana Jovanovski, who topped Sweden’s Johanna Larsson.
“The toughest part of being off court was not knowing when I would be back on court, it was day to day, sometimes I made progress, sometimes there were setbacks,” said Azarenka.
US 18th seed Sloane Stephens, a quarter-finalist in 2013, was defeated by Russian former top-10 player Maria Kirilenko, 2-6, 6-7 (6/8).
Kirilenko, who had won just one match all year after a lengthy battle with a knee injury, claimed victory on a sixth match point.
Australian 17th seed Samantha Stosur fired 13 aces but still suffered another Wimbledon nightmare when she slumped to a 3-6, 4-46 defeat to Belgium’s Yanina Wickmayer.
The former US Open champion has now failed to get beyond the third round in 12 Wimbledon appearances.
Japanese 43-year-old Kimiko Date Krumm, who made her debut 25 years ago, went down 3-6, 6-4, 7-5 to Russian 22nd seed, Ekaterina Makarova.
Five-time champion Venus Williams, the 30th seed, who missed last year’s Championships through injury, beat Spain’s world No 53 Maria-Teresa Torro-Flor 6-4, 4-6, 6-2.
Czech sixth seed Petra Kvitova faced little trouble from compatriot Andrea Hlavackova in a 6-3, 6-0 win, as well, and 12th-seeded Italian Flavia Pennetta took care of Jana Cepelova 6-2, 6-3.
Coming off her first WTA title at the ‘s-Hertogenbosch Open ahead of Wimbledon, American Coco Vandeweghe continued her fine form with a nice first-round upset of 27th-seeded Spaniard Garbine Muguruza, 6-3, 3-6, 7-5. Fellow American Lauren Davis won her opener as well, 6-1, 6-2, over Alisa Kleybanova.
Other seeds to advance on Monday included No 10 Dominika Cibulkova easily beat Aleksandra Wozniak 6-1, 6-2, as well, and No 23 seed Lucie Safarova topped Julia Goerges in a tightly-contested match 7-6 (7/3), 7-6 (7/3). No 32 seed Elena Vesnina also topped Patricia Mayr-Achleitner.
Briton Naomi Brady raised local hopes with a 2-6, 7-6 (9/7), 6-0) win over Timea Babos of Hungary.
Barbara Zahlavova-Strycova, Polona Hercog, Ana Konjuh, Peng Shuai, Misaki Doi, Casey Dellacqua, Mona Barthel, Jarmila Gajdosova, Alison Van Uytvanck, Kurumi Nara and Tereza Smitkova all won their first matches too.
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