Serena Williams will take on sister Venus in the second round of the Italian Open more than two decades after they last met on the red clay of Rome after both advanced in different styles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Four-time Rome winner \nSerena, 37, returned after two months out injured easing through 6-4, \n6-2 against Swedish qualifier Rebecca Petersen.But 38-year-old Venus, \nwhose only Rome title came back in 1999, needed over three hours to \nbattle past Belgian Elise Mertens 7-5, 3-6, 7-6 .<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Serena has not \nplayed since a hard-fought three-set win also over Petersen in the \nsecond round at the Miami Open in March before withdrawing with a knee \ninjury.The 23-time Grand Slam winner now ranked 11th also withdrew from \nIndian Wells in March complaining of illness.\u201cIt felt good to finally be\n back out. Hopefully I\u2019ll be able to keep it up.\u201d Despite her lack of \npractice, tenth-seeded Williams was never threatened by Peterson, \ndespite 22 unforced errors by the American in the first set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI \nhaven\u2019t been able to train or practice a lot, I was out much longer than\n I expected,\u201d she explained.\u201cI did everything I could to stay fit and \nkeep my cardio up.\u201cI love the clay season and wanted to do everything to\n be a part of it and I\u2019m here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ve just been on this diet \nbasically. It\u2019s been awful. When you\u2019re sedentary, it becomes hard to \nmanage your body. So it\u2019s just basically you have to eat grass.\u201cIt was a\n nightmare. But it worked and it paid off. I feel like I\u2019m taking it one\n day at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the meantime she has been enjoying sharing \nher favourite sites in Rome with her daughter Olimpia who turns two in \nSeptember.\u201cIt\u2019s really fun because I took her to the Colosseum, then I \ntook her to the fountain,\u201d she said.\u201cIt was really cool to share my \nfavourite city with her, some of my favourite things to see. Obviously \nthe pasta and the food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI just smile and take pictures. I don\u2019t \nmind so much.\u201d It will be another family affair on the courts of the \nForo Italico, when she plays Venus, with the sisters last meeting in \n1998, 21 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Venus, meanwhile, came out on top of a tight \ncontest that went all the way to a third-set tie-break despite letting \nthe Belgian back in by missing six match points on her serve.She missed a\n further two match points as Mertens battled to level the set at 6-6, \nbefore finally taking the match in the tie-break and setting up a 31st \nclash with her sibling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just as fierce, Venus is just as \nfierce. We both really want to get some match play. We\u2019ll both do the \nbest that we can,\u201d warned Serena, who leads 18-12, the most recent at \nlast year\u2019s US Open.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Serena Williams will take on sister Venus in the second round of the Italian Open more than two decades after they last met on the red clay of Rome after both advanced in different styles. Four-time Rome winner Serena, 37, returned after two months out injured easing through 6-4, 6-2 against Swedish qualifier Rebecca Petersen.But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61235,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61234","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\/61234","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=61234"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61236,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61234\/revisions\/61236"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}