The good news is that Serena Williams is safely into the third round of the Australian Open after her 6-1, 6-2 tonking of Hsieh Su-Wei.
The even better news is that she looks to be injury-free and ready to stay for as long as it takes to win her seventh trophy in Melbourne.
It may not be polite to mention a lady’s age – and we would not want to offend the world No.1 – but it is worth mentioning that Serena is now 34. She has been plying her trade around the globe for nearly 20 years and that takes its toll on the body. And at her age, a long injury break could mean the end of her career.
The even better news is that she looks to be injury-free and ready to stay for as long as it takes to win her seventh trophy in Melbourne.
It may not be polite to mention a lady’s age – and we would not want to offend the world No.1 – but it is worth mentioning that Serena is now 34. She has been plying her trade around the globe for nearly 20 years and that takes its toll on the body. And at her age, a long injury break could mean the end of her career.
After she lost in the semifinals of the US Open in September, she took a few weeks off to rest and recover. She had been chasing her dream of winning the calendar Grand Slam for nine solid months and she was exhausted both mentally and physically. Worse still, her knees were giving her all sorts of problems as her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou explained at the time.
“She has the same problem as Rafa,” he said. “It’s just playing for so many years, the cartilage is gone. Not all of it, but a big part, so the bones just hit themselves. She has bone bruises and if you keep on playing with this for too long, too much, the next step is a stress fracture.
“The treatment is mainly rest. I mean, the knees have to stop bumping each other and then you recover. I’m not a doctor – she has treatments but I know without rest there is no chance because you keep on hitting the bones all the time.”
So Serena took her time to recharge her batteries and then, weeks before everyone else was thinking about their off-season training, she was champing at the bit to get back to work. By the time she got to Australia, she was fit, she ready and she could not wait to start playing. And then her knee started to hurt again at the Hopman Cup and she had to pull out of the competition. That set the alarm bells ringing but, thankfully, after two matches here, there are no signs of any injury and no signs of the world No.1 being hobbled.
Clad all in ‘hi-viz’ yellow, it is hard to miss Serena at Melbourne Park. Then again, with a serve that could crack concrete and with 21 Grand Slam singles titles in her collection, she stands out from the crowd wherever she goes. She may not have been at her sparkling best on Wednesday but she was still getting the job done in tidy style.
Over the course of the hour it took to reach the third round, Serena managed to repel three break points, rack up seven aces (most of them in the second set) and thump 26 clean winners. There were 16 unforced errors to blot her copy book but when she needed to find the big shot at the right time, she did what was required.
There was one shot, a round-the-net-post corker that even impressed the world No.1. “That was my first one ever, I think,” she gushed. Then there were other shots that did not look quite so impressive. Looking a little like a golfer who has just pulled his shot wildly to the left, she would do that stand-on-one-leg-and-lean-to-the-right-with-both-arms-flailing move in the hope that sheer willpower would pull the ball back into court. Alas, as every golfer could have told her, it does not work.
It was clear, then, that Hsieh was not letting the great one have it all her own way – not all of the time, at any rate.
Playing double-fisted off both flanks, Hsieh is an unusual foe and with a wealth of doubles experience to call upon, she is a canny campaigner. Back in 2013, she clambered up the rankings to a career high of 23 but having gone up like a rocket, she then fell like the stick, in singles at least.
Teaming up with Shuai Peng, Hsieh focused her attentions on the doubles circuit and started to set the world alight. The two became Wimbledon champions in 2013 and French Open champions in 2014 and by May of that year, she was officially the best doubles player on the planet. So, despite her current ranking of 90, Hsieh knows how to play, and Serena knew it. This was not going to be easy.
“She’s definitely a tricky opponent,” Serena said. “And I think it was a good match-up for me to play someone like that who can hit any shot at any time from anywhere on the court. I kind of needed that and some of the things I’ve been working on in the off season kind of worked out for me today.”
The next test will be to see if the work out for her again on Friday when she takes on Daria Kasatkina from Russia.
