A tense Serena Williams defeats Kiki Bertens 76(5) 63 in a match tougher than expected. She’s now set to face Mattek-Sands.
Serena went into her second round match as the heavy favorite having to face Kiki Bertens, number 110 in the world and first Dutch in the rankings. Bertens has never made it past round two at the US Open; Serena, on the other hand, has won the tournament six times, and the last three in a row: nobody expects a fight, not the crowd, not Serena, nor even Bertens probably.
However, the first set tells a totally different story. The first games already prove everybody wrong: Serena goes love-forty in her second service game, looking tense and not mentally on point. Bertens seems to understand what is going on and grabs her chance at an early break with a great forehand passing shot after a tough point.
The Dutch player swings freely through the court, hitting strong, flat shots that give Serena some headaches. Bertens plays, and rightly so, as if she has nothing to lose. The same cannot be said for Serena, who’s here on her quest for the first calendar year Grand Slam since Steffi Graf in 1988.
The score follows the service games until 5-4 in favor of Bertens, who had been serving greatly up to that point. However, the thought of defeating Serena Williams is not an easy one to manage and when pressure comes in, it becomes increasingly harder to keep into play those flat, deep shots. When serving for the set, Bertens offers the first break points of the match, after a double fault and an unforced error with her forehand. The number one player in the world knows the importance of the point and forces her opponent to a forehand error, leveling the score up to 5-all. Everyone in the crowd is now sure Williams is going to cruise to an easy win. Serena, however, seems to have waken up on the wrong side of the bed committing 4 double faults in her following service game and offering a break point. In the end, she finally manages to hold her serve and to force the set into a tiebreak.
Bertens goes for every short, starting playing again as she did at the beginning of the set, going up 4-0 with four straight winners, giving everything she has into play. But it’s at this point that the idea of winning a set against Serena Williams in an Arthur Ashe stadium packed with people becomes scary again. Bertens starts hitting errors all over the court, with Serena simply having to make her play, finally taking the breaker seven points to five, also thanks to a lucky net on the set point.
Numbers tell of a set played horribly by Serena: 26 unforced errors to 13 winners, 8 double faults to 4 aces, 33% of points won on her second serve. Nonetheless, the mere fact that she managed to win the first set playing this poorly is a great indicator of the mental strength of Serena and of the huge gap between her and her opponent.
At the beginning of the second set Williams and Bertens gift breaks of serve to each other with Serena managing to get one more than the Dutch player, going up five games to three. The last game is a pure formality, with a dried up Bertens handing the break, the set and the match to Serena, who is now going to face her fellow compatriot Bethanie Mattek Sands in the third round.
Williams today appeared to start feeling the tournament and the importance of the goal she’s trying to achieve. The road to the final win is not going to be an easy one but she seems to be mentally ready to fight her way through it.
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