After being away from professional singles play since little over a year, Serena Williams won her first match at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California on Thursday. In the first round of the tournament, the 23-year old bested Zarina Diyas of Kazakhstan 7-5, 6-3.
In the next round, she will now go on to face Kiki Betens. Serena’s sister Venus Williams is also a part of the tournament and maybe her opponent in the third round if Serena wins her next match.
Serena began the match pretty slow, and it almost took six attempts before he secured a breakpoint. However, after the match went on, she seemed to improve. With her husband and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian looking on; Serena broke her opponent Zarina in the 11th game of the first set. In her first service, Serena served a love game capped by a 100-mph ace.
Serena and Zarina had played each other twice before. The first match being at Indian Well in the year 2015 while the second one was held at the Miami Masters in the year 2016. Both of these earlier matches were straight-set winners for Serena.
Serena has been away since the time she won the Australian Open in the year 2017 before making a comeback in the Thursday’s tournament. At that time, she was eight weeks pregnant. She gave birth to her daughter Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr. six months ago.
On Wednesday, she had made an announcement stating her return.
She said that she was eagerly waiting to make a comeback, but as there were complications from the birth, she was forced to miss training time, and she was also not physically ready to play for a full-on competition until now. She was initially scheduled to return playing at the 2018 Australian Open, but she had to withdraw as she was not ready.
