A slow moving Serena Williams made an encouraging return to tennis after maternity leave, taking a set off the French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko in an exhibition match Saturday, but said she has not made up her mind about defending the Australian Open title.<\/p>\n
In a match featuring a super tie-break and lasting one hour and seven minutes, Ostapenko won 6-2, 3-6, 10-5.<\/p>\n
The 36-year-old American, winner of 23 grand slam single titles, was making a comeback after taking nearly 11 months off to have her first child.<\/p>\n
Her last match was the Australian Open final, which she won despite being two-month pregnant.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was good to be back out there. I missed playing, I missed competition, I missed the crowd, the atmosphere so much. It was really nice to be back,\u201d said Williams after the match.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if I am totally ready to come back on the Tour yet. I know that when I come back I definitely want to be competing for championships,\u201d she said, refusing to commit yet to the Australian Open, which starts in a little over two weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am taking it one day at a time. I am going to assess everything with Patrick and my team,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
It was the first time Ostapenko had played against Williams, whom she described as her \u201cchildhood idol\u201d.<\/p>\n
The 20-year-old Latvian was born almost two years after Williams turned professional in September 1995.<\/p>\n
Williams was clearly having problems with her serve and was broken five times in the 17 games.<\/p>\n
She also stuck mostly to the baseline and only twice charged the net.<\/p>\n
She started well, breaking Ostapenko\u2019s serve in the first game of the match. But Williams\u2019 inability to get her first serve going, along with several unforced errors early in the match, allowed the Latvian to break twice and build a 4-1 lead before wrapping up the set 6-2.<\/p>\n
Williams\u2019 problems with her serve continued, but she unleashed a few of her trademark double-handed shots on both sides to break Ostapenko twice at the start of the second set to go 3-0 up. By this time she was moving better and she started hitting more winners.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the really good thing. In the beginning, it felt a little tough. But as the match moved on, I was less afraid,\u201d explained Williams.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew I was not going to fall over and break. The more I played, the more confident I felt that I would be able to go for shots that I was afraid to go for in the first set.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a wonderful opportunity for me to kind of test where I am at. Not just physically, but also mentally.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A slow moving Serena Williams made an encouraging return to tennis after maternity leave, taking a set off the French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko in an exhibition match Saturday, but said she has not made up her mind about defending the Australian Open title. In a match featuring a super tie-break and lasting one hour […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16682,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16683,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16681\/revisions\/16683"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}