Garbine Muguruza’s Wimbledon title defence was hijacked by Belgian Alison van Uytvanck as the little-known world No.47 produced a fearless brand of hard-hitting tennis to topple the champion with a 5-7 6-2 6-1 victory in the second round.
Muguruza came from a break down to survive a nervy first set but there was no let off in the next two and the third seed was left shaking her head in disbelief as van Uytvanck bombarded her court with serves that often clocked at over 177km/h, with the fastest recorded at 185km/h.
But it was not just the serve that caused Muguruza mayhem.
She slipped and fell over heavily on her shoulder while chasing down a van Uytvanck drop shot as the final set ran away from her in the blink of an eye, with a netted serve ending her challenge.
The Spaniard suffered the earliest exit of a defending champion at the All England Club since Steffi Graf was beaten in the first round in 1994.
Earlier in the day world No.1 Simona Halep showed all the marks of a champion when she emerged unscathed from a first-set fright to reach the third round of Wimbledon with a 7-5 6-0 win over China’s Zheng Saisai.
The Bulgarian’s hopes of completing a French Open-Wimbledon double appeared to be in trouble when she fell 5-3 behind in the first set.
But the newest member of the grand slam winners’ circle showed her new-found maturity to win the next 10 games on the trot and completely locked out Zheng from the contest.
The Romanian world number one will next face Hsieh Su-wei from Taiwan.
The 2016 finalist Angelique Kerber earlier admitted to being caught cold as she had a battle to get past Claire Liu in three sets.
The German 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 did not know too much about her 18-year-old opponent.
Kerber will next meet Naomi Osaka in the third round after the Japanese beat British favourite Katie Boulter 6-3 6-4.
Meanwhile, local hope Johanna Konta was beaten in straights by world No.33 Dominika Cibulkova, losing 6-3 6-4 in 78 minutes.
The Brit’s defeat means she has not reached the third round at a major since last year’s Wimbledon.