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Serena returns in style

4 min read

MASON, Ohio (AP) – Rested, relaxed and ready, Serena Williams is back. Playing in her first tournament in six months, Williams beat Anastasia Myskina 6-2, 6-2 on Tuesday night in the first round of the Western & Southern Financial Group Women’s Open.

“I felt really relaxed,” Williams said after dominating Myskina in the 56-minute match. “I haven’t felt this way in a long time.”

Williams, who has been bothered by a chronic left knee injury, chose the Tier III event for her first match since losing in the third round of the Australian Open.

“I almost could have played Wimbledon,” she said. “I was about 60 or 70 percent then. But I probably would have had an embarrassing loss.”

Williams said she was mentally refreshed, but felt a bit rusty.

“I could have returned better. I made a few easy errors I shouldn’t have made,” she said.

While Williams was on hiatus, Myskina – the 2004 French Open champion – had played regularly and well, going 14-4 in her previous 18 matches, including four wins at Wimbledon. But she was no match Tuesday night for Williams, whose only tentative move was her first serve, clocked at 97 mph.

She soon cranked it up to the 120-plus mph range.

“I was surprised myself, because I wasn’t serving that well in practice,” she said.

Williams had beaten Myskina in all four previous matches between 1997 and 2004. But Myskina, ranked 11th in the world, was the tournament’s No. 2 seed behind defending champion Patty Schnyder.

“Maybe I was the underdog,” Williams said.

But she took charge early, winning the first two games and then rallying with four straight points to win the third game by simply outmuscling Myskina. The Russian held her next serve and made a run in the following game, when Williams double-faulted and then missed an overhead for the win. But another ace made it 4-1.

“She hadn’t played in six months, so I didn’t know what to expect,” Myskina said. “Her serve was pretty good. I knew I was going to have to keep winning my serve if I was going to stay in the game.”

Williams broke Myskina again in the eighth game to win the set, and Myskina bashed a ball to the court in disgust.

Williams struggled at times in the second set, but the outcome was never in doubt, even though Williams said she “had to stay extremely focused.”

Williams, who was ranked No. 1 in the world for 57 weeks in 2002 and 2003, began the tournament ranked No. 139 because of her inactivity.

“It’s devastating,” she said of the humble ranking. “But I have no pressure on me. I have nowhere to go but up.”

In an earlier match, fifth-seeded Jelena Jankovic advanced to the second round with a 6-3, 6-2 win over Ukraine’s Olga Savchuk.

Jankovic, a Serb who knocked Venus Williams out of Wimbledon with a fourth-round upset last month, is 15-6 since snapping a 10-match losing streak that started in the second round of the Australian Open in January.

“I was in bad form,” Jankovic said. “That was one of the worst periods of my life. I didn’t enjoy tennis much, like I used to, but I like it now.”

In other matches, fourth-seeded Katarina Srebotnik beat Rossana De Los Rios 6-3, 7-6 (3); sixth-seeded Marion Bartoli eliminated Chin-Wei Chan 6-2, 6-3; eighth-seeded Gisela Dulko defeated Marta Domachowska 7-5, 6-3; Meng Yuan ousted Mariana Diaz-Oliva 6-3, 7-5; and Maria Elena Camerin cruised past qualifier Carly Gullickson 6-1, 6-1. Gullickson is the daughter of former major league pitcher Bill Gullickson.

Abigail Spears beat Alexa Glatch 6-3, 5-7, 6-4; Varvara Lepchenko defeated Natalie Grandin 4-6, 6-1, 6-3; and Alexandra Stevenson was trailing Sania Mirza 6-1, 2-0 when Stevenson retired because of a strained right shoulder.

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