The Czech creaked rather than cruised into the third round, moving past the American in a match as scrappy as a Henman Hill picnic after a seagull attack.
"A huge relief," she said afterwards to polite applause from the crowd. "Really up and down points, turning one way and the other ... I am so grateful I can keep going."
Court Two spectators, many blissfully unaware they were watching the reigning champion, might be forgiven — Krejcikova herself barely looked the part.
A season dogged by back and thigh niggles has left her short of sharpness, and her patchy 4-3 record for the season coming in was on full display in a match strewn with errors.
Spraying forehands wide of their mark and dumping backhands into the net, nothing suggested a twice Grand Slam champion was holding court.
At times, the contest resembled less a Grand Slam match and more a practice session between two very rusty players - Krejcikova produced 39 unforced errors, while Dolehide got fewer than half her first serves in the entire match.
The pair exchanged errors and breaks of serve throughout -- Dolehide trying to power her way into the contest while Krejcikova sought to claw her way to victory on the back of slow, sliced forehands whispering back to a gentler age.
Scarcely can a champion have produced such a lukewarm performance on the Grand Slam stage but it would be fair to say the Czech blows hot and cold on the tennis court.
French Open champion in 2021, she has followed that title run with three first-round defeats and one second-round showing at Roland Garros in the years since.
Her form can read like a nursery rhyme. When she’s good, she’s very, very good — Grand Slam good. But when the gears don’t quite catch, when timing slips or confidence wavers, she can unravel just as spectacularly.
As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 19th-century American poet and nursery rhyme writer, had it: when she is good, she is very, very good — but when she is bad, she is horrid.
Still, the 17th seed did just enough to scrape through to gentle applause and a sterner test ahead: 10th seed Emma Navarro, who won't be quite so generous.