Serena struggles to find form; Kerber upset
WIMBLEDON, England — For a while, as the shadows marched slowly across Court No. 1 on Thursday, nothing worked for Serena Williams. Her vaunted serve crashed repeatedly into the net. Her groundstrokes veered wide or carried repeatedly long.
In a match watched from the stands by her friend Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, the most surprising element was the look of shocked uncertainty on Williams’ face.
It was a look that seemed to say: This kind of struggle can’t be happening again, can it?
It was.
For the second straight match, Williams faced a virtually unknown opponent. This time it was Kaja Juvan, 18 years old and ranked 133rd, a hard-hitting Slovenian who had to scramble through qualifying to make it into her first Wimbledon draw.
On paper, Williams and Juvan are not in the same tennis universe. Williams, if anyone needs reminding, has won the singles title at this tournament seven times. She holds 23 Grand Slam singles championships, one shy of tying the record. Yet she is also 37, battling back from injuries that followed a 13-month maternity leave and — for now at least — a far cry from her dominant self.
Juvan took their first set in 27 rapid-fire minutes. As Williams struggled to gather herself, the spectators began to buzz. Were they about to see an upset for the ages?
Williams responded the way the greats so often do. Coming back, she did not play spectacularly at first. She simply kept her nerve, began grinding balls back into play and let her opponent make errors.
It was enough for Williams to edge ahead with a first-game break of service. From there, her confidence built. She took the second set easily and never really looked back, racing to a big lead in the final set before holding on and serving back-to-back aces to win. The final score: 2-6, 6-2, 6-4.
“It was definitely coming together as the match went on,” said Williams, who has played sparsely this year, and often well below standard, while coping with a painful left knee.
At the French Open, she was knocked out in the third round with an ungainly loss to Sofia Kenin. In her first-round match at Wimbledon she was noticeably underconfident against Giulia Gatto-Monticone.
“I’m just low on matches basically,” Williams said after Thursday’s win. “I could feel it. But I’m getting there.”
With the victory, Williams avoided the fate of the woman who defeated her in last year’s Wimbledon final: fifth-seeded Angelique Kerber, who lost to Lauren Davis, an unseeded American, 2-6, 6-2, 6-1.
“She makes a ton of balls, like a human backboard,” Davis, a 25year-old who has never gone further than the third round in Grand Slam singles, said of Kerber. “I knew going in that the key was to change the pace.”
Williams, looking for extra work to hone her game before her next singles match, will play Friday with Andy Murray in an unusual and heavily anticipated mixed-doubles pairing — two Wimbledon singles champions playing side by side.
“Doubles with Andy is going to help her because it is competition, and right now she needs competition,” said Williams’ coach, Patrick Mouratoglou.“The first set (Thursday) was really bad, but then she started to flow, and when she is starting to flow you can see it.”
In the end, he said, Williams was beginning to flash some of her famed confidence again. She will need it. Williams began this tournament in the draw’s most difficult corner, topped by Ashleigh Barty, the new No. 1, and three Wimbledon champs: Garbiñe Muguruza, Maria Sharapova and Kerber.
Muguruza, Sharapova and now Kerber have all lost, but other stern tests remain. The first will be Williams’ next opponent, 18thseeded Julia Görges, whom she defeated in the Wimbledon semifinals last year.
Then there is Barty, who won the French Open last month.
On Court No. 2 on Thursday, Barty brought out every bit of her firepower. Down went Alison Van Uytvanck, 6-1, 6-3, in less than an hour. It was the kind of stunning quality Serena Williams has shown at the All England Club on many occasions, but not yet in 2019.