Williams will face Estonian world No. 2 Annette Kontaveit in the round of 64 singles, also on Wednesday. It will be their first career meeting. After early struggles on her serve on Monday night, Williams took 10 of the last 13 games against Kovinić, a 27-year-old from Montenegro who is ranked 80th in the world. After the match, during a ceremony celebrating her tennis career, Williams said she was buoyed by the vocal crowd of nearly 24,000. “The crowd was crazy,” he said. Williams double-faulted twice in the first game, but eventually raised her first serve percentage to 66 percent. He won 33 of 43 first serve points. A key moment came in the sixth game of the first set when Kovinic appeared on the verge of 4-2. But a Williams shot that looked long and wide was neither, breaking the back of the baseline and the outside edge of the singles sideline. It was the first of 11 straight points for Williams as she rolled the rest of the way. It was Williams’ third match since announcing that she would “evolve away from tennis”. “I’ve never liked the word retirement. It doesn’t seem like a trendy word to me. I thought of this as a transition, but I want to be sensitive about how I use that word, which means something very specific and important to a community of people,” Williams told Vogue article published earlier this month. “Maybe the best word to describe what I’m doing is evolution. I’m here to tell you that I’m evolving away from tennis, towards other things that are important to me,” he said. In her post-match press conference, she was asked if this is definitely her last tournament. “Yeah, I was pretty vague about that, right?” he said with a smile. “I’ll stay vague because you never know.” But earlier in court, Williams, 40, said it was a difficult decision to move forward. “I think when you’re passionate about something and you love something so much, it’s always hard to walk away,” he said. “Sometimes I think it’s harder to leave than not to leave. That’s what happened for me.” When asked by Gayle King what winning will be for her going forward, Williams pointed to her venture capital firm and also said she wants to work on her spiritual life. Williams’ singles victory was witnessed by her husband, Alexis Ohanian, and their daughter, Olympia, with the youngster wearing white beads in her hair, reminiscent of Williams’ appearance when she won the first of her six US Open titles as a teenager in 1999. . “I can’t wait to wake up and be like, OK, I don’t have to run to court today,” Williams said. “I can’t wait to just be a mom. She’s such a good girl. I just want to be a good mom to her.” Also on Monday, Ukraine’s Daria Snygur, who won qualifying matches to enter the tournament, upset Romanian No. 7 Simona Halep in three sets 6-2, 0-6, 6-4. “This match for Ukraine, for my family, for all the fans who supported me. I want to thank you all,” said an emotional Snigur. It was Snigur’s first Grand Slam match at this level. She won the Wimbledon girls’ singles title in 2019. CNN’s Jill Martin contributed to this report.
