Serena overcomes nerves, shaky serving to beat Bertens and advance to 3rd round
She hasn't done it the easy way all year, so why start now?
Serena Williams had considerably more trouble with her second-round US Open opponent than her first. She advanced Monday by winning eight straight games - and dropping just five points - before Vitalia Diatchenko retired, but ran into a very game Kiki Bertens on Wednesday, prevailing in two tough sets, 7-6(5), 6-3.
Williams got down an early break in the first, and the 110th-ranked Bertens - who has never made it past the second round at Flushing Meadows - surprised by holding her nerve (and her serve) until 5-4, when she tightened up and got broken serving for the set. She pulled it together, though, and took things to a tiebreaker, in which she raced to a 4-0 lead.
Williams was giving Bertens all the help she could've asked for. She looked nervous, her timing was off, and she sprayed shots all over the court, committing an absurd 26 unforced errors in the set. The elbow that's been giving her trouble for much of the year seemingly continued to hamper her serve; she tossed in eight double faults in the first, and started floating in pancake second offerings behind which she lost two-thirds of the points.
And yet, as has become commonplace in her historic and wonderfully bizarre season, Williams figured it out once her back met the wall. A couple of big first serves got her back into the tiebreaker, and a lucky net cord helped her escape with the first set in hand. The Serena Scream was out in full force.
Are you pumped up? #Serena #SWeep15 #usopen pic.twitter.com/i248L05Y6l
— US Open Tennis (@usopen) September 2, 2015
Williams cleaned things up in the second, making just eight unforced errors and losing just one first-serve point. But Bertens didn't let her run away with things. She continued to put pressure on Williams' second serve, and after getting broken early, she broke straight back.
Bertens faded down the stretch, but she didn't roll over; she challenged Williams to beat her. And so Williams beat her.
It was her 30th consecutive major match win, and leaves her five from the calendar Slam. She gets countrywoman Bethanie Mattek-Sands next.