Azarenka in fine touch at Wimbledon

In her first round match at Wimbledon, Victoria Azarenka scratched her way to a three-set win over teenager CiCi Bellis.

Yet on Wednesday against last year’s semifinalist, she found another gear.

Facing No.15 seed Elena Vesnina, the reigning Indian Wells champion, Azarenka strode into the third round following a 6-3 6-3 win that showcased all the attributes that took her to the top of the rankings and two Grand Slam titles.

Granted, Vesnina battled back issues which required a medical time out late in the second set.

But nothing was going to deny Azarenka in this sort of form – the Belarusian produced eight aces, 26 winners and just 13 unforced errors, while winning 11 of her 13 trips to the net.

She controlled the centre of the court, kept her intensity high and played with a depth and consistency that an error-prone Vesnina simply couldn’t match.

“I actually haven’t looked at (the match) for stats. But I just have some things that I’m pretty happy with in my head from what I remember, and some things that I feel like I still need to improve, which are, I think I played really clean from the baseline today,” Azarenka said.

“I could have played a little better on the return, but she also served really well. I felt she was going for her first serve and for her second serve with a good pace and mixing it up really well.

“But overall, I felt like I played really good on the important moments, which gave me opportunities to win comfortably today.”

Given she only returned to tennis in June at Mallorca after the birth of her first son Leo in December and was playing just her fourth competitive singles match in 13 months, it was a quite remarkable showing.

In fact, it looked liked she’d barely been away.

After extending her head-to-head record against Vesnina to 8-0 – with all of those victories in straight sets – Azarenka will next face Brit Heather Watson, who thrashed Mallorca champion Anastasija Sevastova, the 18th seed, 6-0 6-4 in just 61 minutes.

“I think she’s a great player. She definitely is going to be a crowd favourite,” Azarenka said.

“I think she played really well last week in Eastbourne. It looks like she feels really comfortable coming into this match.

“To me, it’s just another match. I don’t want to put any of those aspects into, pay a lot of attention to it. I’m just going to go out there and play my match.

“I obviously have a lot of respect to every opponent that I play and not take anything for granted.”