Serena Williams started Tuesday with a 37-0 record in the first round at Grand Slam tournaments.
She also began the day with a four-match losing streak, the longest of her career.
Williams focused on the second of those statistics, the more discouraging one. And while she never appeared truly in danger of coming out on the wrong end against 100th-ranked Klara Zakopalova, there were times when it did seem Williams simply could not wrap things up.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Twice, Williams served for the match and was broken. Eight times, Williams was a single point from victory and couldn’t complete the task. Finally, on match point No. 9, Zakopalova pushed a forehand wide to seal Williams’ 6-3, 6-7 (5), 6-4 victory, leaving the 10-time Grand Slam champion screaming and hopping at the baseline in a mix of joy and relief.
“I was just desperate for a win,” the second-seeded Williams said, “and I think it pretty much showed in my game.”
Whether it was the result of rust or a lingering knee injury or the swirling wind that carried debris from the stands onto the court, Williams’ mistakes kept coming.
PHOTO: AP
She finished with the same number of unforced errors as winners, 35, wound up wasting 13 of 20 break points and put only 55 percent of her first serves in play.
Williams called her performance “horrendous,” and said: “I just played junior tennis — or even worse.”
All in all, it was a two and a half hour struggle for the 2002 French Open champion.
In contrast, Novak Djokovic got an easy ride into the last 64 when his opponent Nicolas Lapentti hobbled off court with an ankle injury. Djokovic was leading 6-3, 3-1.
The Serb could sympathize with the plight of Ecuador’s Lapentti’s having retired from a quarter-final clash at this year’s Australia Open.
Grimacing in pain after going over on his left ankle while trailing 5-2 in the opening set, Lapentti called on the tournament trainer to strap it up but after limping around court for another six games, the 32-year-old called it a day.
Men’s ninth seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, runner-up in Melbourne last year, registered his first win at his home slam with a 6-4, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 victory over fellow Frenchman Julien Benneteau. Eleventh seed Gael Monfils and former champion Juan Carlos Ferrero also progressed.
However, James Blake, the 15th seed, was upset 7-6 (8-6), 7-5, 6-2 by Leonardo Mayer, a little-known Argentine qualifier ranked 93rd making his Grand Slam debut.
“He served well at times, but I just wasn’t putting any pressure on his second serve,” Blake said.
“Couldn’t get really anything on my forehand. Usually that’s a pretty effective shot. Today, I didn’t feel like it was hurting him,” he said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier