With Bear Grylls watching from the Royal Box, at times on Centre Court it felt as if the celebrity adventurer might have to stifle the urge to abseil down to the greensward to offer Ashleigh Barty a few guidelines on how to survive when your basic tools aren’t working.

The No.1 seed was uncharacteristically nervy in her second round joust with Anna Blinkova, presenting gift-wrapped free points time and again. Amid 33 unforced errors, Barty’s trusty serve imploded to the tune of nine double faults, and more than once she delivered successive misfires to hand over a break. 

Whether the problem was the left hip injury sustained at Roland-Garros last month was not clear. This was only her second match since then, at a Grand Slam where she has yet to go beyond the fourth round. But she plainly endured rather than enjoyed the 90 minutes required for her 6-4, 6-3 victory over the world No.89.

“She definitely pushed me very hard,” said Barty, before lapsing into her signature quirk of the third person plural, in acknowledgment of how crucial her team is to her even when she is alone on court. “We had to do a lot of homework to work out how we could figure out her game. She played a great match. A few points here and there, and it could have been a different story. I’m happy to get through and have another opportunity to play. 

“Grass court tennis is where it’s at. I wish we could play all year on it. It’s felt like a long two years since I was here but I certainly enjoyed being back out here today.”

Nerves were only to be expected, of course – from 22-year-old Blinkova, that is, a newcomer to the sacred theatre of the Centre Court. Runner-up for the 2015 girls' title here, the Muscovite’s one top 10 win to date came against Belinda Bencic early last year; and at the 2019 US Open she pushed the defending champion and No.1 seed Naomi Osaka to three sets.

Her own first round here was actually more straightforward than Barty’s. Where the Australian required three sets to bring Carla Suarez Navarro’s Wimbledon career to an end, Blinkova saw off the Hungarian doubles specialist Timea Babos for the loss of four games. All the same, in this match it was startling to see Barty give away as many double faults in her opening service game – three – as she did for the entire contest against Suarez Navarro. 

In a first set where her personal unforced error count eventually reached 18, Barty simply couldn’t find consistent quality. One moment her trademark slice was doing its stuff, the next mistakes were plaguing her, with all too many of them far from marginal.

Blinkova, with nothing to lose, dug in and very largely stayed with the world No.1. It was only at the end of the first set that Barty steadied herself sufficiently for a key breakthrough, incongruously then serving out the chapter with apparent ease to love. 

A different story looked on the cards for set two, when the Australian underlined her advantage with an immediate break. Yet once again Barty’s service problems allowed Blinkova back in, before eventually she did enough to seal the win. But it was bumpy stuff.

Her world No.1 spot is on the line this Fortnight – if she falls before the semi-final and Aryna Sabalenka takes the title, the Belarusian will ascent the summit. Barty will hope for a smoother ride in her third round against Katerina Siniakova.

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