Williams Wins First Match Since Layoff at BetLM

Williams Wins First Match Since Layoff

BRISBANE, Aus­tralia

After win­ning the first match she’s played since her US Open final defeat last Sep­tem­ber, Ser­ena Williams admit­ted she’s dread­ing another sea­son of gru­el­ing work­outs but still can’t live with­out tennis.

The 30-year-old Williams had her ser­vice bro­ken in the open­ing game Mon­day before beat­ing Chanelle Scheep­ers of South Africa 6–2, 6–3 at the Bris­bane Inter­na­tional. She needed just 68 min­utes to advance, fir­ing seven aces and tak­ing advan­tage of eight double-faults by Scheepers.

She was asked after the match whether her four-month lay­off indi­cated she may have fallen out of love with tennis.

“It’s not that I’ve fallen out of love … I’ve never really liked sports, I never under­stood how I became an ath­lete,” Williams said.

She added, laugh­ing, that she’s never liked work­ing out and “I don’t want any­thing that has to do with work­ing physically.”

“If it involves sit­ting down or shop­ping I am excel­lent at that. I don’t love ten­nis today … but I can’t live with­out it so I am still here.”

Williams has said pre­vi­ously that she plans to cut down on her sched­ule in 2012.

“I just want to be able to do other things I am doing and expand on that,” she said Mon­day. “I think that will help keep my moti­va­tion up. I have always been prepar­ing myself for life after tennis.”

Not that the 13-time Grand Slam win­ner is plan­ning on retir­ing any time soon. She’ll play young Ser­bian Bojana Jovanovski in the sec­ond round in her only warmup tour­na­ment before the Jan. 16 start of the Aus­tralian Open, a major she has won five times.

In other matches Mon­day, top-seeded Saman­tha Sto­sur of Aus­tralia, who beat Williams for the US Open title, advanced with a 6–2, 6–3 win over Anas­tasiya Yaki­mova of Belarus and sixth-seeded Jelena Jankovic of Ser­bia defeated Carla Suarez Navarro of Spain 6–4, 6–2.

For­mer No. 1-ranked Ana Ivanovic beat Tamira Paszek of Aus­tria 6–3, 6–3 and Amer­i­can qual­i­fier Vania King defeated Melinda Czink of Hun­gary 6–3, 6–4.

Ivanovic will play Aus­tralian Open defend­ing cham­pion Kim Cli­jsters in the sec­ond round, one of the tough­est rivals either player has faced so early in a tournament.

The last time the two play­ers met, for­mer French Open cham­pion Ivanovic blew five match points at Miami last March. Ivanovic had three break points when lead­ing 5–1 in the decid­ing set before Cli­jsters came back to win 7–6 (4), 3–6, 7–6 (5) and improve her career record with Ivanovic to 4–0.

“Last time it was a hard one for me,” Ivanovic said Mon­day. “It would be nice to con­vert a match point. I will go out there and test myself, push and see how far away I am from the top players.”

Top-seeded Andy Mur­ray plays his open­ing men’s match on Tues­day. Second-seeded Gilles Simon of France advanced with a 6–3, 6–4 win over Amer­i­can Ryan Sweet­ing on Monday.

Denis Istoman of Uzbek­istan also went through to the sec­ond round when Flo­rian Mayer of Ger­many retired with a groin injury while trail­ing 7–6 (5), 2–3. Eighth-seeded Bernard Tomic of Aus­tralia beat Julien Ben­neteau of France 6–2, 4–6, 7–5.

Tomic was down a break in the decid­ing set and needed six match points before clos­ing out his win over Benneteau.

“To get back from a sit­u­a­tion like that is good,” Tomic said. “It’s all expe­ri­ence … I know what to do in sit­u­a­tions like this in three-setters.”

Our sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more ten­nis news see: Williams wins first match since lay­off.

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