Back on court for the first time since 2010, Nicole Vaidisova makes it look easy (updated)

In an era when professional players are away from the Tour for three weeks and bemoan their lack of match play, Nicole Vaidisova took to the court in Albuquerque, NM Tuesday afternoon after four and a half years away from the game ... and won in straight sets.

A year off a second shoulder surgery and a breakup with her husband, much-older ATP Tour player veteran Radek Stepanek, the 25-year-old Czech's comeback began against a contemporary and fellow former prodigy, Sesil Karatantcheva of Kazakhstan.

She won, 6-3, 6-4, advancing to the second round of the ColemanVision Tennis Championships, a $75,000 ITF pro circuit event that's a couple of levels below the WTA Tour, but still boasts a high calibre of play.

Vaidisova served out the match with little drama, except for a double-fault on the first match point on her own serve at 40-15. The  look on her face, after a smile, was one of disbelief. She peered over to her supporters, smiling, shared a nice handshake at the net with Karatantcheva then sat down at her chair, her two rackets in her hands, and dropped her head for just a moment.

Albuquerque is a long, long way from the lawns of the All-England Club. For one thing, it's at altitude, which makes it a challenge to keep the ball in the court. Most of all, there are no ballkids; the players have to fetch their own balls, hit them back over to each other in cooperative fashion – in other words, they're forced to acknowledge the very existence of their opponent.

Even after a long absence, it's probably been a long, long time since Vaidisova experienced that in a match.

In so many ways, she looked exactly the same. Certainly, she looked as fit as she ever did. When last we saw her, she was wearing Reebok clothing and playing with a Yonex racket. She came out Tuesday wearing Reebok clothing ... and a Yonex racquet. Not the same one, of course.

The strokes didn't look quite the same. But they were close enough. Vaidisova used an abbreviated service motion in the first era of her career. She still does. The backhand, which back in the day had a very early takeback similar to the one used by the Williams sisters, looked a little more laboured. The movement was a little more laboured, as well. But considering how long it had been, how long she had worked to come back from the second surgery and how many butterflies had to be involved, she looked remarkably composed.

Karatantcheva, ranked No. 191, was a French Open quarter-finalist at 15. After a two-year drug suspension, she returned to the pros in early 2009, starting over from scratch, and has been back in the top 100 only briefly since then. It's easy to see why; she still has a serve that wouldn't even flatter a junior player. And it doesn't appear her game has progressed much in a decade.

Still, she's a viable professional player. And as a contemporary, perhaps she might even have helped Vaidisova feel more comfortable. Vaidisova could just as easy have drawn a hard-hitting teenager who had no idea who she had been, and had no fear or deference to her elder.

Here's the match, if you want to take a look.

And here's Vaidisova playing Serena Williams in the semifinals of the 2007 Australian Open.

There was one noticeable different in Vaidisova: a rather impressive dent in the front of her right shoulder, no doubt a remnant of the two surgeries.

She will have a day off Wednesday to ponder and recover, and will next play the winner of a match between No. 3 seed Johanna Konta of Great Britain (ranked No. 118) and American Julia Cohen (ranked No. 288), in the second round.

(UPDATE: Vaidisova played Konta Thursday, and was defeated 1-6, 6-1, 6-4. Great effort; she had three break points to get it back even at 5-5 in the third set before falling to the Australian-born Brit). Vaidisova received another wild card next week for a $50,000 tournament in Las Vegas, so the comeback will continue).

(Screenshots from the ColemanVision Tennis Championships livestream)