Serena’s preparation for Paris far from serene

“Change of plans,” Patrick Mouratoglou, long-time coach of Serena Williams, tweeted 10 days ago. “Serena hasn't been competing for a while, and we want to get as many matches under our belt as possible before Roland-Garros - so we're adding the Emilia-Romagna Open to our schedule.”

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The plan lasted all of two matches.

Desperate to shake off her rust on the dirt and find form and rhythm after crashing out in her first match since February at the WTA Italian Open earlier this month, the 23-time Grand Slam champion accepted a wild-card invitation from the low-key WTA 250 clay-court tournament in Parma that was added to the calendar for this year owing to the pandemic.

The world No. 8 was subsequently drafted in as the top seed but hardly played like one. In the first round against the 572nd-ranked Italian Lisa Pigato, making her WTA level debut after coming through the qualifiers, Williams was broken by the 17-year-old with a string of winners in the opening game before recovering to win 6-3, 6-2 win. It was Williams’s first victory since beating Simona Halep in the Australian Open quarter-finals, and will remain the only “W” on clay going into next week’s French Open where the 39-year-old’s pursuit of the record-equalling Grand Slam number 24 looks more implausible than ever before.

In her second-round match in Parma, Williams was beaten 7-6(4), 6-2 by Czech Katerina Siniakova, a former doubles world No. 1 currently ranked 68th in singles. Williams had a set point at 5-4 in the opening set, but saw a forehand winner whizz past as she stood unmoved in the middle of the court. Siniakova won the tie-break with relative ease. Williams came right back, breaking her opponent in the opening game of the second set before a drastic dip in level drowned her; Siniakova winning 16 of the last 18 points.

The pattern was quite similar to her defeat in Rome, which was Williams’s 1,000th Tour-level match. After a first-round bye, the American went down to Argentina's Nadia Podoroska, the world No. 42 who made the semi-finals at Roland Garros last year, 7-6(6), 7-5. In both her surprise losses, Williams’s otherwise potent first strike, the booming serves that often earn her cheap points in crucial moments, was the biggest letdown. Against Podoroska, Williams’s first serve percentage was below 50, while against Siniakova she managed to win only 59% of the points on her second serve (compared to Siniakova’s 80%) with seven double faults to go.

Since returning from maternity break in 2017, Williams has had to suffer heartbreak after another in her four-year long chase for the Slam title that will put her on par with Margaret Court's all-time record. She has agonisingly failed to cross the final hurdle four times, stumbled twice in the semi-final stage and once in the last-eight, but never has she appeared so far off from having a shot at it as she does heading into this French Open.

"If I answer you today, I am not going to rate her chances (at the French Open) really high because she's lost the second round in the last tournament, and first round the one before," Mouratoglou was quoted as saying by Reuters on Friday. “So it's difficult to say that she's going to win Roland Garros. But we still have 10 days to work so we (have) got to take the best out of those 10 days and I know how much work she can do in a short period of time and how much she can improve.”

Williams has not had much success in her pursuit in Paris, anyway. Twice in t three French Open appearances since 2017, she has been forced to pull out mid-tournament due to injuries—in 2018 before her fourth-round showdown with Maria Sharapova and last year after winning the first round. In 2019, she was thrashed by Sofia Kenin in straight sets in the third round. Williams also gave a walkover after the first round in Rome in her lone clay-court tournament the same year, whereas she did not play a single event on the clay before the 2018 Roland Garros. Compare that to at least a few build-up tournaments that she usually plays on hard courts before the season’s opening and closing Grand Slams in Melbourne and New York and it perhaps provides an indication on why Paris and Williams haven’t enjoyed a good romance lately.

Williams is a three-time French Open champion but, after her maiden title back in 2002, it took more than a decade for her to get hold of the Suzanne-Lenglen Cup again in 2013. Her last title triumph, in 2015, came after beating 13th seed Lucie Safarova in the final and having not faced a single top-10 seed throughout the tournament. It has been her least productive Slam, making just four finals in Paris --- half of her second fewest Grand Slam final appearances, at the Australian Open --- out of 33 overall. Williams’s trademark power game accompanied by a menacing serve that leaves her opponents time-starved at the opposite end on grass and hard courts gets significantly blunted on the slow, bouncy clay courts. Even more so at the age of 39.

"I would say that Roland Garros is the most difficult because it requires her to be at the top on the physical side and it doesn't highlight her qualities in the same way,” Mouratoglou said. “But I think on the other surfaces she will have her chance (to win a Grand Slam)."

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