By Richard Pagliaro | Wednesday, August 7, 2019
Serena Williams surged past Elise Mertens, 6-3, 6-3, for her third Top 20 win of the season in Toronto.
Photo credit: Reuters
Maiden meetings can compel Serena Williams to explosive episodes.
Facing Elise Mertens for the first time, Williams showed her strong finishing skills sprinting to a 6-3, 6-3 sweep in Toronto.
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It was Williams’ third Top 20 win of 2019 and first Toronto match since she lost to 20th-ranked Belinda Bencic in the 2015 semifinals.
Down a break early in both sets, Williams shed the rust, moved with more vigor and struck with more conviction as the match progressed.
“I thought she had a really good performance,” Williams said afterward. “I’ve never played her, but I’ve seen her play a lot.
“It was really good to finally be able to get to play her. It feels good. A little sluggish a little bit—I didn’t play a ton of matches on hard court. But yeah it feels good to be back out here.”
It was Williams’ first match since she fell to Simona Halep, 6-2, 6-2, in last month’s Wimbledon final. That defeat denied her quest to claim her 24th Grand Slam title and match Margaret Court’s all-time record.
Questions swirling around the 23-time Grand Slam champion were clear. Would she face lingering emotional hangover in just her ninth hard-court match of the season? And could she summon the footwork and fast first-step that were missing when Halep steamrolled her at SW19?
"I actually had more time to prepare for the Rogers Cup than I did for Wimbledon, so that's just no joke," Williams said. "And I just am like, now that I'm just injury free, I'm just enjoying being able to train, and I haven't been able to do it since January, really. So I just think that the fact that I can train and practice and get in the gym is really going to be helpful for me."
At the outset, Williams’ uncertainty was evident as she coughed up a couple of double faults and netted a few shots giving up the break at 15 in the third game.
A concentration lapse cost Mertens, who turned in a clunker committing a double fault and error to gift the break back in the sixth game.
Twenty-two minutes into the match, Williams showed her wheels. Sliding up to a short ball, she shoveled a backhand into the corner. Sweat soaked the back of Williams’ blue dress as she cranked an ace out wide holding for 4-3 with a loud “come on!”
As the set progressed, Williams’ footwork accelerated. Moving up to a mid-court ball quickly, the Wimbledon finalist belted a backhand breaking again for 5-3.
"I know when I got down one break I got real negative and I don't know what happened on the first time I got down," Williams said. "I think she just played really well. She's obviously a really good player. I just needed to just double down and get more focused."
Williams doubled Mertens’ total winners—eight to four—cruising through the final five games to seize the 35 minute opener.
The 20th-ranked Belgian stalled her slide to start the second set. Exploiting errors from the three-time champion, Mertens broke for 2-0.
As in the opening set, Mertens played consistent tennis building leads, but struggled to sustain them in the face of Williams’ jolting power. Mertens battled back from triple break point down, then saved another break point in the fifth game. On the fifth break point, the Belgian spit up a double fault as Williams broke for the second time in a row.
Both women are accomplished doubles players, but Williams did more damage moving forward. She spun a drive volley winner for her fourth straight game and a 4-2 lead.
The 37-year-old Williams scored her fifth break of the match to close it, raising her Rogers Cup record to 31-4.
All three of Williams’ Rogers Cup titles have come in Toronto—the tournament alternates between Toronto and Montreal—and she’ll try to keep the roll going in her first meeting against Russian qualifier Ekaterina Alexandrova.
"I face a lot of players for the first time, so it's just really about going out there and doing a little studying about their game and then going from there and playing," Williams said.
Williams, who pronounced herself fully healthy, is on a quarterfinal collision course with second-ranked Naomi Osaka, who can regain the world No. 1 ranking going further than world No. 3 Karolina Pliskova this week.