Heather Watson puts lack of preparation aside to defeat Kristyna Pliskova in Australian Open first round

Heather Watson’s 19th grand-slam victory was, on paper, the same as her 18th. She defeated Kristyna Pliskova in the opening round of the Australian Open, just as she had 13 months ago.

But this win came against the odds, because Watson had been one of the 72 players stranded in a two-week hard quarantine. As she told reporters afterwards, she lost physical condition during the fortnight, and even found herself unable to finish one of her handful of practice sessions since then because her leg went into spasm.

Pliskova thus had a significant advantage. Because there were no Covid cases on her flight to Melbourne, she was allowed out of the quarantine hotel for five hours a day to visit the gym, the training court and have a bite to eat.

When it came down to two tie-breaks, however, Watson produced the steelier tennis to come through by a 7-6, 7-6 margin. “It made the victory today sweeter because we'd been through a lot the last few weeks,” said Watson, who had filmed numerous social-media videos while cooped up in her hotel.

There was one of her performing a five-kilometre run from the door to the window and back again, and another simulating a triathlon, with the bath providing an impromptu swimming pool.

“It was really tough mentally I would say the most,” Watson added. “Physically I felt like I did a pretty good job in hard quarantine of working out pretty much every day and trying to keep up my fitness with what I could do. I think today I could see it on my coach's face as well, he was extra proud.

“I felt my body change a bit. When you're fit and strong, your body just feels hard. It just wasn't as hard as usual. Mentally I felt super strong because I'd got through it.”

As for the leg, “I was really worried about if I was going to be able to play my first round here. Fortunately it healed really quickly.”

Pliskova’s left-handed game is built around a big, swinging serve, which Watson was only able to break once in the course of the match. It was essential, then, that she defended her own serve solidly. As she admitted afterwards: “It’s kind of like a men’s match in that sense.”

Watson’s next opponent will be 21st seed Anett Kontaveit, the Estonian who is coached by Andy Murray’s father-in-law Nigel Sears. A win would take her to the third round of a major for the first time since Wimbledon in 2017.