Serena Williams loses Wimbledon opener against Harmony Tan

Serena Williams made her return to Wimbledon one year after injuring herself there and she lost the match 5-7 6-1 6-7(7) to move on.

The opening set opened with Tan getting an early break after Williams entered the match very rusty. It was somewhat expected as the American did not play for a whole year. Her return happened in the doubles where the court is bigger and some of her early balls were sailing quite wide. Her serve was also rocky but even after that, she was able to turn a 0-2 deficit into a 4-2 lead.

Tan had a pretty solid game plan, allow Serena to dictate and move her around the court. There were many drop shots, lobs and slices forcing Serena to move because her stamina obviously was always going to be a problem. In the end, she dropped her serve two more times in the opening set bringing the tall to three losing the set 7-5.

She responded in superb fashion dominating play from the baseline. Once again the stamina was a problem and she actively looked to shorten the points. It worked in that one as Williams blasted Tan off the court easily 6-1. She hit 22 winners to only 13 errors en route to the smashing. The final set was a proper tennis battle with both players playing pretty solid tennis.

Serena jumped out to an early 3-1 lead but ran out of stream in the middle of the set against a younger Tan who was in better shape. The French player was able to take the 4-3 lead and then Serena held from 15-30 down to make it 4-4. She broke her opponent once more for the 5-4 lead. She failed to close out the match but saved a match point at 5-6 to go to the match tiebreak. In the tiebreak, she jumped out to a 4-0 lead but lost it 7-10.