Wimbledon woe for defending champion Garbine Muguruza as Belgian springs a shock

Alison Van Uytvanck played the match of her life to dump defending champion Garbine Muguruza out of Wimbledon.

The Belgian, ranked 47th in the world, put on a brilliant performance and won 5-7 6-2 6-1 in the All England Club twilight.

Muguruza was strangely out of sorts but could not cope with Van Uytvanck’s tremendous hitting.

The Spaniard becomes the sixth top-10 seed to lose in the opening two rounds of this year’s tournament, but this was the biggest shock of all.

Van Uytvanck said she had no choice but to be aggressive.

“I had to play like that I think, otherwise I wouldn’t have a chance,” she insisted.

“Obviously she’s so aggressive, so if I kept letting her play I would lose anyway.

“So I was like, ‘Let’s try this and maybe if it works we have a chance’.

“So that was my plan to do in the second set and in the third, and obviously it worked well.”

World number one Simona Halep is unsure whether she has the game to win at the All England Club.

The Romanian, who won her first grand slam at the French Open last month, made it through to the second round with a 7-5 6-0 win over Saisai Zheng on Court One.

It was just her second match on grass this season, having had no competitive action after ending the clay-court swing, and she accepts to win consecutive grand slams is a big ask.

“You need a better game, in my opinion, to win on grass. You have to be more aggressive, to go to the net more.

“I just want to focus match by match. To be at the end of the tournament, that is going to be a big challenge.”

Angelique Kerber admitted to being caught cold as she had a battle to get past Claire Liu in three sets to progress to the third round of Wimbledon.

The 2016 finalist was staring a defeat in the face after losing the first set, but came back to win 3-6 6-2 6-4.

Liu has pedigree at the All England Club as she is the 2017 junior champion and Kerber concedes she had little prior knowledge about her 18-year-old opponent.

She said: “I didn’t know a lot about her. This is always tough to play against someone you actually don’t know, and also don’t really know how she is playing.”

Kerber will meet Naomi Osaka in the third round after the Japanese beat British favourite Katie Boulter 6-3 6-4.

Johanna Konta described Dominika Cibulkova’s performance in the Slovakian’s 6-3 6-4 win as the “perfect storm”.

Home hopes in the women’s draw were ended when the 2017 semi-finalist lost on Centre Court.

“All I can say is that is the best she’s played against me,” Konta said, of the player who was aggrieved to miss out on a seeding.

“I came up against kind of a perfect storm from her.”

Ashleigh Barty came out on top in a clash of former Wimbledon junior champions with Eugenie Bouchard.

The Australian, who won the girls’ title in 2011, beat the 2012 junior champion 6-4 7-5 on Court Three to move into the third round.

There were also wins for Jelena Ostapenko, Belinda Bencic, Carla Suarez Navarro and Daria Kasatkina.