Victoria Azarenka wins despite agony of nasty fall

When Victoria Azarenka hits the ball, she emits a peculiar "o-whoo" noise which is best described as a grunt or possibly a hoot. It cannot be a scream, because we heard her scream in -earnest on Monday, and that was even more alarming.

Azarenka yelped and sobbed after a nasty fall, just after the halfway point of her match against Portugal's Maria Joao Koehler.

Her mobility from that moment was even more limited than that of Rafael Nadal, who followed her on to a slippery No1 Court.

But unlike Nadal, she was able to squeeze her way through to the next round. Koehler was mostly lamentable. You would have to be, to lose 6-1, 6-2 to a woman playing on one leg. But she did crunch some hefty strokes, and one service return wrong-footed Azarenka in the second game of the second set.

Azarenka tried to turn, but her foot slid out from under her and she ended up in a near-splits position.

Her right knee seemed to hyperextend, and she was sprawled behind the baseline until the trainer arrived to apply strapping. To Azarenka's credit, she showed stickability despite the pain. But her opponent would have been wise, in the light of the way she squawked in pain during one long scurrying rally, to force her to move forward a couple of times as well as from side to side. "For two minutes I had such a -consistent pain that it just freaked me out," the world No2 said.

"I was concerned and the physio was concerned. But I just wanted to give everything I have on that court." The women's draw lost its first seed when world No5 Sara Errani went out in straight sets to Monica Puig of Puerto Rico.