Both looked strong in the first round of the Top Seed Open in Kentucky and will face off Thursday in their 31st meeting.
This is comeback time for everyone in tennis, and Serena Williams pushed the theme to the extreme on Tuesday.
In her first match in six months, and the first since the coronavirus pandemic began, Williams lost the first set to unseeded Bernarda Pera at the Top Seed Open in Lexington, Ky., and found herself down, 0-40, on her serve at 4-4 in the second.
But Pera, a left-hander who was raised in Croatia and now represents the United States, never got the chance to serve for the match.
READ ALSO: Serena Williams ready to play US Open and French Open
There was no crowd to lift Williams. The tournament is being played without spectators, with the sounds of passing traffic, including the occasional cement mixer, replacing the roars and groans of a crowd.
Instead of feeding off the buzz, Williams had to feed off her championship past, bringing the thunder with her first serve and forehand when she needed it most.
She saved four break points to hold serve, scrapped into the corners to win the set by breaking Pera in the next game, and then tapped the accelerator pedal to close out a 4-6, 6-4, 6-1 first-round victory that was every bit as taxing as it sounds.
She is rusty, no doubt, but still resilient. If Williams thought she had seen and heard it all in tennis at age 38, 2020 has given her a new landscape and a new set of challenges.
“It was a really calm atmosphere; it was really chill,” Williams said of the empty stadium. “I can’t say I disliked it at all. I kind of didn’t mind it. I’ve been through so many things in my career. So this was totally different. I think I won today because I was calm for once in my career.”
That is a stretch, of course. Williams is often at her most irresistible when she keeps her emotions in check and focuses on the task at hand. (See her repeated in-the-zone demolitions of the now-retired Maria Sharapova.)
But Pera, a flat hitter ranked No. 60 with no apparent fear of Williams’s pace, gave her plenty of reason to feel less than serene. She slapped angled winners with little warning to finish off high-velocity exchanges and kept Williams off-balance with her left-handed serve. Williams even took a tumble at one stage as she tried to shift direction.
“I knew I was needing to do better; I knew I could do better,” Williams said. “And it was an interesting game. She hit so many winners and so low. I just kind of had to get used to her game a little bit.”
READ ALSO: Serena Williams Shuts Down Claims That She ‘Forced’ Her Husband Alexis To Step Down From Reddit
No active player in women’s tennis has rallied to win after losing the opening set more often than Williams. She has a winning record in such matches in the last 10 years, but winning this one required her to lift to a higher plane in a hurry.
Down, 4-4 and 0-40, she saved the first break point with a big first serve, saved the second with a huge forehand winner down the line, saved the third with a fully ripped backhand that clipped the back of the baseline and saved a fourth later in the game with another first serve that Pera could not handle.
“That 0-40 and how she got it back is a sign for better tennis on the horizon,” said Sven Groeneveld, the veteran coach who has worked with Sharapova and Sloane Stephens and who was watching Williams from afar on Tuesday. “Serena needs more matches to get in her flow, but the big serve is always there for the rescue. Had she lost this match it might have derailed her for a bit, but let’s see if she can grow into the tournament.”
Her second-round match will come Thursday against her sister Venus Williams, who defeated Victoria Azarenka, 6-3, 6-2. It will be their 31st meeting, with Serena holding an 18-12 edge.
Source: New York Times
