Heather Watson shakes off her nerves.

Heather Watson could hardly eat before her match with Ajla Tomljanovic . But the emphatic flourish of this 6-3, 6-2 filleting of Ajla Tomljanovic, the willowy Croatian who like her spent much of last season stricken by glandular fever, ought to have assuaged a little of that gnawing tension. Only 12 months ago she was chronically fatigued and dispirited, enduring the full debilitating effects of her illness, but here she leapt zealously into the breach left by the absence of Wimbledon’s favourite British damsel, Laura Robson.

Had she been conscious of pressure to become the country’s third player in the second round, given she had only found herself there once before? “Oh, absolutely,” Watson said. “From the moment they announced the name, I felt the support.”  But goodness, she was tense. Amid the euphoria of only her fourth singles win on these lawns, she spoke almost solely of her stress, her problems eating through terrible nerves, and the irritations of waking up at 4am when she had set her match-day alarm for five hours later.

“Ever since I was ill, my sleeping hasn't quite been normal,” she reflected. “I woke up at four and was ready to go. I gave myself 12 hours to sleep, because I knew that I would probably wake up. My fitness coach said to me, 'I would actually be worried if you had slept well.’ It’s just tension. I always get nervous before I go on, even if some times are worse than others, this being one of them. I just get used to it.”

Such was the high tariff of her play, though, that it was Tomljanovic who looked more mentally addled by the end. The 21-year-old from Zagreb has been touted as one of the game’s most talented starlets, defeating world No 4 Agnieszka Radwanska en route to the fourth round of this summer’s French open, but Watson was convincing in dismantling an adversary ranked seven places higher. Our cherub from the Channel Islands has been on quite a tear of her own, advancing to the semi-finals last week at Eastbourne as she seeks to hasten her comeback from the sickness that jeopardised her prospects of ever reclaiming status as the British No 1.