The first match of the day on Rod Laver saw Sharapova going through a routine, almost practice match in her easy win over Sasnovich. As if not to be outdone, Serena followed suit by completely dismantling her opponent from Taiwan, who uses 2 hands on both sides. Match duration? Barely over one hour. Perhaps not coincidentally, that’s the norm for a tennis lesson.
The good news was Hsieh came into the match with a game plan, and she executed. The bad news was, she had to play against Serena. Just ranked inside the top 100, Hsieh knew her game had no chance against the better of the two Williams sisters. So she did what actually, maybe, just possibly might have worked: playing crafty. From the outset, Hsieh went for the forehand slices and sharp wide angles to try to throw Serena off her rhythm. For the most part however, the #1 seed on the other side of the net barely seemed to notice. Serena was able to hit big on every ball with ease, from service return winners to backhands down the line. In fact, one could have easily lost count the number of times Serena quickly ended the point off the serve return alone. It wasn’t until the 4th game that she missed a big return to gift the game away for a 3-1 lead. Then it was back to the lesson plan, as she held for 4-1 then 5-1, all very short points. In the 7th game Serena decided to bring the game to deuce as if to demonstrate what to do as part of the lesson: cross court winner. The lesson was half over.
Set 2 saw much of the same. Raw power from Serena very much continued to dominate. Hsieh’s play style reminded one of Martina Hingis back in the day. Perhaps the best part: the Taiwanese native was all smiles throughout the entire match, and seemed to appreciate the occasion and had fun with the opportunity. More slice forehands were attempted, with the occasional lob. In the 6th game, Serena even gave a quick lesson on what not to do by dumping a forehand into the net for 5-2. Finally, as the clock ticked right to the hour mark, she served out the match. Just to show how one could argue this was a one sided lesson, here are some match stats:
26 winners vs. 9, 7 aces vs. 0, an astounding 85% 1st serve points won vs. 39%, and 55 total points won vs 34. The only category Hsieh prevailed in was at net, 75% vs. Serena’s 71%. Even then, Serena came to net almost twice as much.
The dominant display was impressive from the top seed, however, she admitted that playing Hsieh was what she needed.
“She was definitely a tricky opponent but it was a good match for me to play someone like that. I needed that,” said Williams.
Next up for Williams will be 2014 French Open Girls’ champion Daria Kasatkina. The Russian defeated Croatia’s Ana Konjuh 6-4, 6-3, in second round match.
