By Chris Oddo | Tuesday August 11 2015
Serena Williams overcame the wobbliest of starts to move past Flavia Pennetta in three sets in Toronto
Photo Source: Vaughan Ridley/ Getty.
It was perhaps one of the ugliest opening sets that Serena Williams has ever played. The World No. 1 dropped 18 of 27 points on serve and was broken in all four of her service games.
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The windy conditions proved to be tricky, and Williams looked badly out of sync in her first hard-court match since Miami in early April. Meanwhile, Flavia Pennetta was more than willing to take advantage of Williams’ struggles. She broke to love for a 2-1 lead in the second set and seemed to be well on her way to a shock upset.
But Williams got her wake-up call (and smashed a racquet, which she later gave to a fan—nice touch!) and picked up her game from there, taking control of the middle set to force a decider, then cruising to the finish line with a hard-earned, 2-6, 6-3, 6-0 victory to reach the third round of the Rogers Cup in Toronto.
“It was a tough holding and serving day for me,” Williams said in an on-court interview after the match. That would be an understatement. Williams finished the day with a 45 percent first-serve percentage. She was broken five times, but did not face a break point in the final set and only dropped two points on her serve in the final stanza.
Williams, who entered the match with a 6-0 record vs. Pennetta, improves to 41-1 on the season and keeps alive her bid for a fourth Rogers Cup title. Williams fell last year in the semifinals to her sister Venus in Montreal, but has won titles in Canada in 2001, 2011 and 2013.
After falling down a break in the second set, the 21-time major champion rallied to win 11 of the last 12 games to sail to victory.
“I just love playing here and I was like ‘Oh my gosh I’m down a break, I don’t want to go home yet,’” Williams told the crowd. “I was just thinking ‘Come on Serena, just keep fighting.’”
Williams says the tough challenge could pay off for her later in the week. “It was definitely good for me to have a match like this, playing a good player like her," Williams said. "She’s actually a really great player. Especially since I haven’t played a match on hard courts since early April it was really good for me to have this long match and get ready for hopefully the rest of this week.”
In other action on Tuesday in Toronto, unseeded Victoria Azarenka worked her way past Elina Svitolina, 6-1, 6-4, to set up a second-round encounter with Petra Kvitova.
13th-seeded Angelique Kerber, last week’s Stanford champion, stayed hot with a 6-0, 6-1 victory over Japan’s Misaki Doi.
There were a few big upsets on Tuesday, as 9th-seeded Carla Suarez Navarro was dropped by Alize Cornet in three sets while 10th-seeded Karolina Pliskova was bounced by Mirjana Lucic-Baroni in three sets despite having a shot to serve for the match in set two.
12th-seeded Timea Bacsinszky fell to Alison Riske in three sets and Samantha Stosur was knocked off by Daria Gavrilova.
11th-seeded Ekaterina Makarova eased past Anna Tatishvili, 6-3, 6-3, while 15th-seeded Sara Errani moved past Kristina Mladenovic, 5-7, 6-1, 6-0.