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WIMBLEDON, England — If Serena Williams returned to the All England Club on the lookout for an eighth Wimbledon singles title, she has a incredibly prolonged way to go. But if she came again at age 40 hunting for a far better memory than what she took from past year’s event, she accomplished it, scrapping and believing by the peaks and valleys of a few sets on Tuesday, but in the long run dropping to Harmony Tan, a small-identified but tactically astute Frenchwoman who beat Williams, 7-5, 1-6, 7-6 (7), in the first spherical.
It was a ragged effectiveness from Williams, the best women’s player of her period, as she tried using to shake off the rust while trying to solve the myriad riddles posed by the 115th-ranked Tan.
That was certainly easy to understand. This was Williams’s first singles match in a yr, and the final one had finished in suffering and tears on this same Centre Court when she tore a hamstring all through her 1st-round match and experienced to retire towards Aliaksandra Sasnovich.
Tan, coached by the 1998 Wimbledon finalist Nathalie Tauziat, lacks pure electricity and has a puffball 2nd provide, but she understands tennis geometry and has an unconventional resource established that is properly-suited to grass. From the commence, she held Williams guessing and stretching, mixing usually-beautiful drop photographs with forays to the internet towering lobs with counterpunched backhand passing shots sideswiping forehand slices with looped topspin.
No a person but Tan realized what was coming (and there were a couple faults, far too). Williams, who has missing to this kind of variety-loving gamers even in her prime, normally looked befuddled early. She also seemed as limited as piano wire, struggling to enable her normal electricity move and lacking swing volleys and method photographs by the bunch though laboring to move laterally.
Tan will experience Sara Sorribes Tormo, a Spaniard seeded 32nd, in the second spherical.
