| Monday, 23 June 2008 Written by Kate Battersby If Serena Williams was unfamiliar with the name Kaia Kanepi before their first ever career meeting on No. 1 Court this afternoon, chances are she will remember the Estonian now. The two-time Wimbledon champion emerged the 7-5, 6-3 winner, but only after an unexpected test lasting 73 minutes from the former world junior number one.
Perhaps 26-year-old Williams was expecting the worst from this match, as she arrived on court clad in a white double-breasted raincoat courtesy of the same clothing supplier that has previously furnished Roger Federer with his eye-catching white blazer. She was clearly unaware of (and possibly, after eight previous campaigns in SW19, unaccustomed to) the excellent forecast for the week.
But in the first set it seemed there was a possibility of rain on Williams’ personal parade. She permitted her opponent no fewer than four break points in the first game of the match. Maybe her unfamiliarity with the 23-year-old Estonian was down to Williams’ departure from Roland Garros last month two rounds earlier than Kanepi. She was therefore not there to witness Kanepi’s best Grand Slam result to date, when she reached the quarter-finals before losing to Svetlana Kuznetsova. As Kanepi has never won a singles title, it was that run at the French that accounts for her current ranking of 36.
Early on, Williams appeared to have left her first serve in the locker room, which was a problem since she was simultaneously struggling to combat Kanepi’s serve and powerful groundstrokes. Kanepi, sporting a pair of impenetrably dark sunglasses to shield her from the sunlight, was meanwhile returning well and with increasing confidence. But she will look back unhappily on the match at 5-5, when lack of belief at the most critical moments denied her a shining chance to break. Worse still for Kanepi, after all her good work she even fell short of the tiebreak, putting a forehand in the net to gift set point and then surrendering in the most disastrous way possible, with a double fault. It was an inglorious end to what could have been a winning set for her.
That trait of champions – belief – did the damage in the second set, too, giving Williams an early break. No doubt this came as a relief to her parents watching from the stands.
Certainly no one needed to tell Williams that the initiative was being handed to her. With every tiny haemorrhage of confidence from Kanepi, Williams would pump her fist and command herself: “Come on!” By the end, she was sufficiently in command to grasp victory with her first match point. But if she was seeking a useful early workout, she certainly got one.
| Court 1 - Ladies' Singles - 1st Round | |
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Match Statistics
