Williams initially trailed 4-1 in the second set, but battled back, got it to 5-3 and had a triple break point opportunity.
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It’s telling how important the Williams sisters consider the Olympics, given the many Zika-induced withdrawals from the Games by golfers and male tennis stars. Zhang will face the victor of Laura Siegemund of Germany and Tsvetana Pironkova next.
However, Venus’ first-round singles loss to Kirsten Flipkens on Saturday – a match that lasted more than three hours – did not bode well for the siblings, and they fell in an early hole on Sunday.
Flipkens, meanwhile, will face Safarova in the second round of the singles event. She could face a tricky battle in the second round, having only just got a win back over Kristina Mladenovic previous year in Beijing.
Flipkens, who was making her Olympic debut, was given little chance against the 36-year-old Williams who had just made the Wimbledon semifinals last month.
Flipkens later thanked the “amazing” Brazilian crowd for helping her pull off one of the biggest wins of her career. After dropping off her luggage, she headed straight to the courts so she could meet up with her doubles partner Venus Williams.
“Here it’s very hard to play because it’s fairly open, there is constantly some kind of wind”, said Croatia’s Marin Cilic, who beat Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov 6-1 6-4.
Serena Williams opened defense of her Olympic singles gold medal with a patchy-at-times 6-4, 6-2 victory over Australia’s Daria Gavrilova.
“I can’t say I am the pioneer because it was Althea Gibson, it was Zina Garrison, it was Arthur Ashe, it was so many people before me”, she said.
The Rio Olympic Games have just begun but Serena Williams is already having a blast.
But there was plain sailing for the other women’s seeds in action, as No. 7 Madison Keys, No. 9 Carla Suarez Navarro, No. 14 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, No 15 Elina Svitolina and No. 16 Barbora Strycova all advanced to the second round.
The 40-year-old Zimonjic is a three-time major doubles champion. As long as Serena doesn’t get in her head too much, she’ll be the overwhelming favorite to win gold yet again.
The two-time defending Olympic women’s doubles gold medalists got their accreditations processed after flying in Wednesday morning.
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Nishikori, a quarter-finalist in 2012, breezed past Spanish left-hander Albert Ramos-Vinolas, 6-2, 6-4, in just 79 minutes. “So they were like, ‘We would love for you to be in this particular song. I thought that particular song on the visual album was really a strong song, and it was also really fun at the same time”.
