Melbourne: Third-seeded Victoria Azarenka won 12 straight games to finish off Heather Watson 6-1, 6-0 in 67 minutes on Monday in the opening match on centre court at the Australian Open.
Azarenka, one of six women who can finish atop the rankings depending on results at Melbourne Park, is coming off a win at the Sydney International last week.
The Sydney champion has gone on to reach the Australian Open final six times since 1997, winning twice. Li Na won in Sydney last year but lost the Australian Open final to Kim Clijsters. Li and Clijsters were in action later on Monday.
Azarenka beat Li in the Sydney final on Friday night and is starting to gain a following in Melbourne's Chinese community.
"After beating Li Na, a lot of Chinese people started recognising me," the 22-year-old from Belarus said about her experience at a Chinese restaurant. "That's a plus."
She'll get more local attention in coming days, with a second-round match against Australian wild-card entry Casey Dellacqua, a 6-3, 6-2 winner over Serbia's Bojana Jovanovski.
In other results, No 26-seeded Anabel Medina of Spain beat Eva Birnerova of Czech Republic 6-3, 6-3 and Eleni Daniilidou of Greece beat 41-year-old Kimiko Date-Krumm of Japan 6-3, 6-2.
No 30 Kevin Anderson of South Africa was the first man into the second round, beating Denmark's Frederik Nielsen 6-1, 6-2, 6-4.
After an unusually cool buildup to the tournament, players were confronted with a strong breeze and temperatures approaching 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) on Monday.
Clijsters was due to play Maria Joao Koehler of Portugal, and Li, the French Open champion, had a first-round match against Ksenia Pervak of Kazakhstan. Top-ranked Caroline Wozniacki, still searching for her first major title, faced Australia's Anastasia Rodionova.
Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal are on the same side of the draw for the first time since 2005.
Third-seeded Federer, a four-time Australian Open winner, was set to play on Rod Laver Arena in a Monday night match against Russian qualifier Alexander Kudryavtsev. Second-ranked Nadal had the last match on Hisense Arena — the second show court at Melbourne Park — against Russian Alex Kuznetsov.
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