Heather Watson up and running at French Open with first-round win against Oceane Dodin

Heather Watson has struggled to find her best form for much of this year, but the 26-year-old Briton has a good record here at the French Open, which she underlined on Monday by beating France’s Oceane Dodin 6-3, 6-0 in her first match.

Watson has appeared in the main draw at Roland Garros seven times and has failed to win a match only once. Although she has never progressed beyond the second round, the world No 80 will have another chance to do so on Wednesday when she faces the winner of Monday’s late match between the American Varvara Lepchenko and the No 16 seed, Belgium’s Elise Mertens.

This was a welcome victory after what has been a difficult time for Watson, who had lost eight tour matches in a row until she finally reached the second round in Nuremberg last week.

Dodin has long been regarded as one of France’s best prospects and won her first – and so far only – senior singles title in Quebec two years ago. However, her progress has stalled in recent times. Twelve months ago she was ranked in the world’s top 50, but she is currently down to No 139.

The 21-year-old Frenchwoman is a hit-and-miss player who loves to go for her shots, particularly when returning serve. On her day she can be a particularly challenging opponent, but when she is regularly misfiring, as she was here, the best tactic against her can be simply to wait for her mistakes.

Although the outcome was dictated largely by Dodin’s mistakes, credit also had to go to Watson, who served well, hitting nine aces, and struck the ball consistently throughout. For all Dodin’s big hitting, the Frenchwoman hit only 11 winners to Watson’s 17. Dodin also made 34 unforced errors to Watson’s 14.

On a warm and humid day the temperature was still 27C when the match began on a sparsely populated Court 3 just after 6.15pm. From the outset Dodin pummelled the ball with impressive power and at first the tactic paid off.

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The Frenchwoman won the first two games, but the storm quickly blew over. Watson levelled at 2-2 thanks a double fault, broke again in the eighth game when Dodin netted a backhand and served out for the opening set after 32 minutes.

Losing that set seemed to shatter Dodin’s confidence. Watson ran away with the first five games of the second set before Dodin finally offered some resistance when the Briton served for the match. Dodin saved four match points, but on the fifth a missed backhand to give Watson victory after just 62 minutes.

“I’m really pleased to get through today,” Watson said afterwards. “I’ve been playing really well recently. Believe it or not, I’ve been feeling really confident, training really hard, eating right, sleeping right. My confidence is really high right now, so once I got settled in that match it really showed and I played really well.”

Watson said it had been her victory over Kateryna Bondarenko in Nuremberg last week which had been the biggest boost to her confidence.

“There had been this losing streak, which I hadn’t even thought about until you guys started writing about it and that started to play on my mind,” she said at her post-match press conference.

“I didn’t play in Madrid and Rome. I had a slight injury which I had suffered before my match in Prague. I think that was kind of a blessing in disguise. I was able to take time away and just recharge and reset. I had a good couple of weeks training really hard and just getting into good routines. It just made me forget about everything that had happened previously.”