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In the final minutes of her quick afternoon on Centre Court, two points from defeat, Karolina Pliskova curled a precise first serve out wide that landed dead on the line, sending a wisp of white titanium pigment flying through the air. Against most other players the serve would not have come back, but Iga Swiatek is not any player. The Pole frantically shuffled to her right and brilliantly improvised with a low, cutting slice return that died on the grass, leaving Pliskova with little chance of a response.

There are days when everything just goes one player’s way, and the unique aspect of Swiatek’s career is how frequently she is the protagonist on such afternoons. Here she put together a dominant performance as her title defence gained some momentum, dismantling Pliskova 6-1, 6-3 to reach the third round.

Two days earlier, after edging past Taylor Townsend in three sets, Swiatek sat on her bench and cried into her towel. She is always the first to point out that tears come more easily and more quickly to her than most others, but she was clearly feeling the pressure. This was a more encouraging performance. Swiatek was mostly brilliant from the baseline, taking the ball early, eviscerating the Pliskova second serve and suffocating her with her heavy topspin forehand, which was relentless and destructive throughout.

Swiatek said the pageantry of opening Centre Court on Tuesday as the defending champion had weighed heavily on her: “It was quite a lot,” she said. “I know that also everybody around me was preparing for this match. So everybody talked about it. I don’t know. It seemed like the opening match, like everybody wanted to see it, as well. It was already a show, even though it was a first round only. It’s quite unusual. Today I felt like it was a normal day at the office. For sure it helped with, I don’t know, the preparation and focus and everything.”

This was, on paper, a real challenge. Pliskova’s career speaks for itself – she is a former No 1 and a two-time grand slam finalist, including here in 2021. She is armed with one of the most brilliant serves of her generation, alongside clean, flat and aggressive ground strokes. After being ranked inside the top 10 between 2015 and 2022, she was sidelined by a series of injuries, particularly a serious ankle problem that required surgery. She completely fell off the WTA rankings.

Since returning to consistent competition at the beginning of the year with a ranking of No 1057, Pliskova has steadily improved, and she entered Wimbledon with quarter-final and semi-final finishes at Queen’s and Nottingham. She has won plenty of matches recently, but nothing prepared her for the level Swiatek displayed throughout the first set as she used her heavy topspin forehand to open up angles and drag Pliskova around the court.

“It’s not that only flat hitters will win here, because the ball also stays kind of long in the air after the bounce,” said Swiatek. “It’s not that it slides every time as it did like 10 years ago. I guess there’s more space for topspin players to be solid and to have longer rallies. Obviously I don’t mind that. For me, the balance is basically between my decisions, because [over the] last [few] months, most of [the] matches that I lost I was playing too fast and too risky. I feel like it’s more about me than the surface or the conditions.”

The past few months have been challenging for Swiatek, who has been desperately searching for her form and, particularly, the mental toughness that has driven her to such great heights. Alongside her new coach, Francisco Roig, Swiatek has thrown herself into improving her game, but by far her greatest challenge has been her mentality. She has been honest and vulnerable when describing the anxiety that has handcuffed her in matches for much of this year.

Her temperament was briefly tested as two excellent sets were broken up by one moment of real jeopardy. Swiatek opened up the second set with an erratic service game, cheaply giving up the momentum she had patiently built and handing Pliskova a 2-0 lead. Swiatek’s focus and toughness have long been some of her greatest strengths, allowing her to routinely bulldoze quality opponents. Pliskova herself has already been one of Swiatek’s most unfortunate victims, losing 6-0, 6-0 to her in their final at the 2021 Italian Open.

However, over the past year, as her confidence has waned, Swiatek has struggled to convert her fast starts into victories. Six of her last 13 losses have come after winning the first set, an enormous amount for a player of her quality. “I think I had trouble at the beginning of the year to accept that,” said Swiatek.

For that reason, by far the most impressive aspect of this performance was how Swiatek reacted to the one bit of adversity. She maintained her composure and aggression, immediately retrieving the break, and quickly reasserted her dominance by rolling through six of the final seven games to keep her title defence alive. She will next face Alex Eala, the 29th seed, after the Filipina sensation closed out a 3-6, 6-2, 6-0 win over Maya Joint, the conqueror of Serena Williams.