Serena Williams Wins Her First Match in the U.S. Open

Her performance was no doubt an improvement, particularly when it came to sealing the deal: she won five of the last six games and finished with 12 aces.

But it was not yet the sort of rock-solid, overwhelming on-target performance to send shivers through the diminished field. Williams no doubt has a grand opportunity at this tournament, with nearly a quarter of the top 100 players missing, including six of the top 10.

She looks motivated and quite fit, but she has also lost some of her traditional ability to intimidate. Ahn, a former collegiate star at Stanford University, was the latest example of an opponent who seemed comfortable in her presence.

The daughter of Korean immigrants, Ahn clearly does not suffer from stage fright in general as her clever and viral TikTok videos have made clear during the tour hiatus. She reached the fourth round at last year’s U.S. Open but has yet to win a singles match on the tour in 2020 or any tour title in any year.

And yet, in her first match against Williams, she started convincingly and cleverly shifted tactics and pace, alternating sliced backhands with flat forehand blasts and often getting the better of the baseline exchanges.

But Williams was still able to summon her signature weapon when she needed it: hitting aces to all four corners of the service boxes and above all doing damage with her wide sliced serve in the deuce court.

“I was really happy with how I just fought for every point, no matter how I was playing,” Williams said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/01/sports/tennis/serena-williams-ahn-open.html