The 34-year-old beat fellow American Madison Keys in straight sets Sunday to win the Italian Open and claim her first ATP title in nine months.
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Keys, 21, is one of several emerging women’s players from the United States and had wowed the Rome crowd in a battling semi-final against Spanish third seed Garbine Muguruza.
Serena won her first title of the year, she’s such a slacker, in Rome this week.
Williams has looked vulnerable this season, has not competed for two months and pulled out of last week’s tournament in Madrid with flu yet she demonstrated she will still take some beating at Roland Garros. Those distant dates serve to underline what a giant of the game the sisters have been although Venus, 35, who lost in the second round here against Timea Babos then stayed on to watch the final, is closer to the end than is her younger sibling. I’m going to definitely go in there and I feel more calm and I don’t feel stress to, like, have to win.
She will begin the defence of her French Open title when the tournament gets underway next Sunday. The clay-court triumph, by a score of 7-6 (7-5) 6-3, cements Williams’ status as the favorite to win the French Open, which starts in a week.
Serena Williams celebrated her 70th championship in style.
Keys was not done yet, pulling back the deficit to level 5-5 before losing the mini-break to give Williams the set point, and she only needed the one chance to go ahead.
Keys also had to overcome rain delays, including a five-minute suspension when she was up 30-15 while serving for the match.
When she connects, she hits it even harder than Williams. After all, Flavia Pennetta is ranked higher than Keys but won’t be in the mix due to her retirement.
The 21-year-old Keys led 3-1 in the first set but Williams steadied from there, winning the next three games and later grabbing the opening set in a tie-break. Timea Bacsinszky, who reached the last eight in Rome, hits a new career-high ranking of ninth, surpassing her previous career-high of 10th during the fall of a year ago.
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“But for me today it really wasn’t so much about how big the tournament was or anything like that”. But they have all been pretty good clay-court players and really consistent players.
