The 31-year-old, who owns an apartment in Paris, fell early in the first set to a 0-2 deficit. Her opponent Maria Sharapova was being amply aggressive, kicking the proverbial dust in Serena's face as she raced out of the starting gate.
But did she really think Serena would roll over and just give her the set on a silver platter? Williams quickly broke back to forge a 4-2 lead.
Sharapova had a tactic, though: go wide to Williams's forehand to force the errors. It worked well enough to allow her to break back and make it 4-all.
At 15-30, unfortunately, MaSha dumped a wild backhand to hand Serena two break chances. The American would capitalize on them and go on to win the first set 6-4.
Sharapova was working mightily hard to put in big serves but Serena only returned them with interest, as she did at the start of the second set. That and an untimely double fault put Maria down 0-30. It must have been difficult to stick with the forehand target game-plan with the wind whipping as it was.
After warding off 5 break points for an important hold, Sharapova screamed with emotion. 1-0 was the score.
But in her next service game, she would be broken at love. 3-1, favor of the American.
Williams was really smacking her around at this point, and having far less trouble holding her own serve. As in the previous set, Maria was up 40-15 when Serena crashed her party to make it deuce. But MaSha steadied her nerves to keep Serena's lead down to only one break.....and there we were at 3-2.
New balls were brought out for the sixth game and, after a few powerful serves, Serena kept her head in front at 4-2.
Maria then held serve again, fending off what could have easily been an embarrassing 2-5 hole.
When Serena again served her way to 5-3, many feared how close to over this match was.
In game #9, it seemed for a moment that Maria would hold easily, but it was deuce in the blink of an eye, and she had to fight with everything she had just to stay in the match.
Serena fired an ace to begin the tenth game.
The second point went to Sharapova as Williams spawned a wild backhand to make it 15-all.
A second ace (195 km/h) put her back on track. 30-15.
Then she hit a perfectly measured backhand down the line to garner double championship point.
And with one more ace, her 41st of the tournament, she'd proven that eleven years did little to water down her form. Nearly in tears, she fell to her knees in palpable elation, perhaps not even hearing the roaring cheers of the crowd as they lauded their great Roland Garros winner.
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| Two-time French Open Champion, Serena Williams |
Breathe tennis!!
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