On her 20th appearance at the Championships in London, Venus Williams edged past Elise Mertens 7-6(7) 6-4 to advance to the second round.
The five time champion started the brightest as she started pounding away on the nervous Belgian. Her net allowed her to finish points off quicker. This allowed her to break Mertens in the second game and eventually raced out to a stunning 3-0 lead. The World number 54 managed to recover though and started to pound the American from her backhand side and managed to pull of an extraordinary comeback to level the set at 3-3. Mertens started to really test the Veteran American, who had not played a grass court match before playing Wimbledon. However Venus used her incredible tennis IQ to overcome the Belgian’s returns. No more break points were created so a first set tiebreak loomed. Venus dominated the first half of the breaker as she raced to three set points at 6-3. However Mertens pounced on a few errors and levelled up at 6-6. After a patient few points Venus eventually used her power to take the tiebreak 9-7.
The second set saw a fearless Mertens advance to a break up early at 2-0 with some stunning shot making an lobs. However Venus would win three games in a row to cruise to a break up as she used her Champion qualities to show her experience in this match. Despite two match points saved and a rain delay there was nothing Elise Mertens could do as Venus eventually advanced to a 7-6(7) 6-4 victory. Venus will now play China’s Qiang Wang in the second round.
