Serena Williams began – and ended – her comeback at Wimbledon after 364 days out of the individual competition looking a lot like someone who hadn’t competed in so long. He missed shots, shook his head, rolled his eyes.
In between, there were times when Williams played a lot like someone the punches and will have taken him to 23 Grand Slam titles. He used punches and punches, held with his arms raised.
Returning to the place of his last singles match, which he had to stop after less than a set due to injury on June 29, 2021 and seven of his major championships, the 40-year-old Williams, was two points away from victory. . But he could not finish the job against a rival who was making his Wimbledon debut and retired with a 7-5, 1-6, 7-6 (10-7) defeat to Harmony Tan, of France, 115th.
“It’s definitely better than last year,” Williams said. “This is a start.”
“He has defeated a legend.”
After three hours and 10 minutes, Harmony Tan defeats Serena Williams in an epic first round pic.twitter.com/IQst8AzXxv
– @ Wimbledon
When asked if this could have been his last game, Williams replied, “This is a question I can’t answer. I don’t know … Who knows? Who knows where he’ll show up?”
With her older sister, Venus, jumping from a guest box seat at the Center Court to celebrate the best points, Serena Williams was very close to getting a match up that lasted 3 hours and 11 minutes and was disputed with the retractable roof closed during the last two sets.
“When I saw the draw I was very scared”
“For my first Wimbledon, it’s: Wow. Just wow,” said Tan, 24, who recalled seeing Williams on television when he was young.
“When I saw the draw, I was really scared,” Tan said laughing, “because it’s Serena Williams. It’s a legend. I said, ‘Oh my God, how can I play?’
This is an indication of how things were at the beginning: of Tan’s first 11 points, only one came through a winner who produced. Others came by mistake from Williams, forced or unforced.
While Williams, who wore two pieces of black ribbon on his right cheek; the reason was not immediately clear: recovered from dropping the first two games to lead 4-2, he reversed course and allowed Tan to quickly return to that set with his mix of twists and turns.
When Tan threw even 4-all on hitting a backhand winner, he celebrated with a shout; that shot was so good that even Williams felt compelled to applaud.
Tan arrived on the day with a 2-6 career record in all Grand Slam tournaments. Clearly enjoying herself – and the stage, the moment, the way everything was going – she broke up 6-5 with the help of a right-of-way cross winner, she looked at her guest post , raised his fist and gestured with his arms. ask for more noise from a crowd that loudly supported Williams.
Soon, a right-handed pass winner gave Tan this set. At the time, it seemed reasonable to ask: could Tan achieve by far the biggest victory of his career? Could Williams come out of a major in the first round only for the third time in 80 appearances (the previous ones were a defeat at the 2012 French Open and a mid-season retirement at Wimbledon last year)?
The latter is what happened, of course, although Williams certainly played spectacularly in the second set. He won a monumental game to advance 2-0, breaking after 30 points and 12 deuces in almost 20 minutes when Tan threw a right-footed shot into the back of the chair referee.
In a blink, then, it was 5-0 and it sure looked like Williams was on its way.
His services picked up pace and also became more accurate: after earning only 57% of his first serve points in the first set, he scored 80% in the second. His other shots were better calibrated: after making 22 unforced errors in the first set, he made 13 in the second.
In the third set, Williams was two points ahead while serving for the game with a 5-4 lead, but was unable to get close.
It’s always a pleasure, pic.twitter.com/ALkCMy1sFD
– @ Wimbledon
Williams has spent more than 300 weeks in first place, but is currently 1,204 due to all this free time and therefore needed a wildcard invitation from the All England Club to join the group.
“If you play week after week, or even every three weeks, every four weeks, there’s a little more toughness to the game,” he said. “But that said, I felt like I had played pretty well in some of them. Not all of them. Maybe some of the keys could definitely have played better. You have to think that if I was playing games, I wouldn’t lose some of those points.”
Still, Tan was on the verge of a 6-5 victory, and Williams erased it with a direct winner, starting a seven-point series that not only sent the game to a tiebreaker, but it went put 4-0 ahead.
However, Tan would not go smoothly. He scored five points in a row to take a 5-4 lead in the new seven-way tiebreaker format adopted this year by the tennis big four: first at 10 points, win by two.
At the time of the crisis, when Williams has excelled so many times in so many big stages, he hesitated. So it happened.
Next up for Tan is a second-round match on Thursday against Spaniard Sara Sorribes Tormo, No. 32 seed. Sorribes Tormo advanced by defeating ranked American Christina McHale 6-2, 6-1.