Serena Williams Gets First Singles Tournament Win Since Giving Birth

The next challenge for Williams will be translating her promising form into success at the Australian Open, where she will try again to win her 24th Grand Slam singles title and tie Margaret Court’s record.

Williams, who donated her singles prize money of about $43,000 to Australian fire relief, did not face the tour elite in Auckland. None of her five singles opponents were in the top 20, and only Anisimova was in the top 70.

Williams struggled in the second round against the 86th ranked Christina McHale, looking edgy and dropping the opening set before finding her range and shaking free to win 3-6, 6-2, 6-3.

McHale, like an increasing number of players, was able to hold her own against Williams’s power. But matching Williams’s staying power is quite another matter.

She has now won a title in the 1990s, the 2000s, the 2010s and the 2020s.

She won her first tour singles title nearly 21 years ago, in February 1999 at an indoor event in Paris. That span surpasses one achieved by Martina Navratilova, long the benchmark for enduring excellence in women’s tennis. She had a nearly 20-year span between her first and last tour singles titles (September 1974 to February 1994).

Williams continues to break new ground and though it is very safe to say that she will never match Navratilova’s Open-era record of 167 singles titles, Court’s Grand Slam record remains in definite peril.

Winning No. 24 would likely be the most remarkable achievement of Williams’s career after all she has experienced and overcome in the last three years.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/12/sports/tennis/serena-williams-wins-titles.html?emc=rss&partner=rss