Serena Williams reached second round of Australian Open easily. File Pic.[/caption]Internet Desk: Women's second seed Serena Williams moves into second round with strong win over Belinda Bencic. Catch Serena Williams firing from the get-go at a major and chances are you are in for a short stay. Most would argue the early rounds are the best time to draw the 22-time Grand Slam champion before she has had the opportunity to work herself into form.
Belinda Bencic will wholeheartedly disagree after a 6-4 6-3 defeat to the No.2 seed on Tuesday. The 19-year-old Swiss had won the pair’s last showdown in Toronto two years ago and was ranked as high as No.7 only last February but had few answers to anything the American threw at her.
“She’s such a great player, was in the top 10, so it was probably the toughest first-round match I’ve ever played,” Williams said.
The only wobble came with the finish line in sight.
When the Swiss finally got on the board in the second for 1-5, she threw her head up smiling with relief.
The bagel was off the table and with nothing to lose, she broke as the six-time Australian Open champion served for the match.
Bencic’s level lifted as she held to love with an ace but Williams made good on her second shot at closing it out.
Despite a double fault on her first match point, she closed it out when a scrambling Bencic backhand found the bottom of the net.
It was a statement victory against a player with which she had a score to settle.
Williams, with “equality” emblazoned across her t-shirt in her post-match press conference, had the added incentive of winning on a statement day.
“With today being Martin Luther King Day, it's important to spread the message of equality, which is something he talked about a lot and he tried to spread a lot, is equality and rights for everyone,” Williams said.
“With that, Nike and all the Nike athletes really want to be a part of this movement. And we really just want to speak up about things that we believe in and talk about equality.
“I think it's a concern for just everyone in general. We want to make sure we always continue to move forward.”
Victory on Tuesday meant the 35-year-old kept her record in tact of having never lost in the opening round at Melbourne Park since her debut in 1998.
She will meet another former top-10 player in the second round, Czech lefty Lucie Safarova, who survived nine match points to beat Belgian Yanina Wickmayer.
Even her recent engagement to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian was not enough to distract Williams from the job at hand.
There are further positive statements to be made.
“I just kept saying that February I'll start looking at the bigger picture of my life,” she said.
“But right now I'm just so focused that this is kind of all I can think about.”
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