Wimbledon: Karolina Pliskova underlines why she's the favourite as Angelique Kerber learns to live with the pressure

The top seeds in the ladies' singles all got off to a winning start on Tuesday

Pliskova won in straight sets on No 1 Court (Getty)

“Holy cow, what are things coming to?” Nick Bollettieri, in his own inimitable style, wrote for The Independent at the beginning of this week. “The Good Lord knows everything, but I reckon even he would be scratching his head if he had to come up with the name of the 2017 women’s champion.”

With Serena Williams on maternity leave after winning her 23rd grand slam title at the Australian Open, and with former champion Maria Sharapova ruled out through injury, the ladies’ singles are more open than ever this year. And three potential champions all began their campaigns on Tuesday, eager to prove that they have the necessary quality to fill the power vacuum left by Wimbledon’s notable absentees.

Of the many potential winners at SW19 — the American tennis coach Brad Gilbert rather hedged his bets by claiming there were “up to 40” potential winners — Karolina Pliskova is currently the bookmakers’ favourite. And the Czech second seed lived up to her billing as a potential Wimbledon winner with a thumping 6-1 6-4 victory over World No 80 Evgeniya Rodina.

Pliskova, who boosted her chances of a good performance at The Championships by winning a maiden Eastbourne International title over the weekend, broke Rodina twice in the opening set and booked her place in the second round in a positively breezy 1 hour and 11 minutes. She will next play Magdaléna Rybáriková, hoping to progress beyond the second round at Wimbledon for the first time in her career.

Pliskova can also rise to World No 1 for the first time in her career should she win her first ever grand slam at this year’s Championships, although she insisted after her first round win that she was content to take each match as it comes.

Pliskova is the current bookmakers' favourite (Getty)

“For me it's just important to win the matches,” she said. “I’m happy I passed the first round, especially when I was playing well in Eastbourne. I was expecting a little bit worse match than I was playing today. Just happy that I'm through and focusing on the next one.

“I felt quite good the first set especially. The second set was a little bit worse. I thought I was serving well, just playing well on her serve, which is always important. I was just trying to be aggressive.”

While Pliskova seems to be coping well with the additional pressure being placed upon her shoulders after a run to the final of the 2016 US Open and the semi-finals of this year’s French Open, reigning World No 1 Angelique Kerber admitted after her first round victory that she was struggling to cope with the unique demands of being the world’s top ranked player.

Kerber enjoyed an outstanding 2016, winning both the Australian and US Opens, as well as rising to the top of the WTA rankings for the first time in her career. But this season the German has struggled, and in Paris last month she suffered the indignity of becoming the first top seed to crash out in the first round of the tournament in the Open era.

Her straight-forward 6-4 6-4 victory over the American qualifier Irina Falconi at least meant she avoided successive first round grand slam defeats for the first time since 2011, but she confessed after her win that she was still learning to adjust to the weight of being World No 1.

Kerber avoided a second successive early exit (Getty)

“I think the expectation you have is one of the main challenges,” she said after her Centre Court victory. “I mean, there is much more expectation, much more pressure, from me, from outside, from everything. You have much more things also to do. So I think the biggest challenge is to schedule your day completely new than if you were, like, yeah, 10 in the world.

“But it's experience. You have to learn. You have to get through all the things. There are up and downs. Right now I am trying to making things not too complicated again, just trying to focusing more on my tennis, taking time for myself, being really here and focusing right now only on the next day and the next match.”

One player meanwhile enjoying having less pressure heaped upon her shoulders is the Spaniard Garbiñe Muguruza, seeded fourteenth at The Championships.

Last year’s French Open champion openly admitted to wilting under the pressure of defending her crown at Roland Garros this year, but began her Wimbledon campaign in impressive fashion, defeating Russia’s Ekaterina Alexandrova 6-2 6-4. The 23-year-old is hoping to go one better than she managed in 2015, when she finished runner-up to Williams.

Muguruza got her campaign off to a positive start (Getty)

“I am pretty happy with my performance even though I didn't play my best tennis,” she commented after her win. “I just think I have something less to think and worry [than in Paris]. But I'm hungry, you know, to do well here, to try be in that position again kind of.

“But for sure it is just a different situation now than at the French Open and I don't have that in front of me. That's gone already.”