You're reading: Serena Williams opens season with comfortable win

BRISBANE, Australia — Serena Williams opened her season with a 6-2, 6-1 win over Varvara Lepchenko in the first round of the Brisbane International on Sunday, showing glimpses of the game that made her the most dominant player on the women's tennis tour in 2012.

After saving five break
points as she adjusted to a strong cross breeze in the first game,
Williams raced to a 4-0 lead and was rarely troubled by the
Uzbekistan-born Lepchenko, who is ranked No. 21 and represents the
United States.

Williams, who won 31 of her 32 matches in the
second half of last season including titles at Wimbledon, the Olympics,
the U.S. Open at the WTA Championships, is coming off minor surgery on
her big toes which forced her to withdraw from a Dec. 29 exhibition in
Thailand.

Her footwork and movement didn’t seem to be affected at
all in a match that lasted just under an hour at the Queensland Tennis
Centre, and she reeled off a succession of powerful winners in the
23-minute second set.

Williams had to withdraw from the Brisbane
International before her quarterfinal last year due to an ankle injury
she sustained in her second-round match and is determined to go further
this time in her only warmup tournament before the Australian Open
starts on Jan. 14.

Sixth-seeded Petra Kvitova had a 6-3, 6-4 win
over Carla Suarez Navarro of Spain and will next meet Russia’s Anastasia
Pavlyuchenkova, who beat Lucie Hradecka of the Czech Republic 6-3, 3-6,
6-3.

Kvitova, who won the 2011 Brisbane International before
claiming her first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon, was unable to convert
her first match point at 5-2 in the second set Sunday, then dropped a
service game before Suarez Navarro’s late comeback ended with an error
on the second match point.

In other matches, Australian wildcard
entry Jarmila Gajdosova had a 4-6, 6-1, 6-3 win over 16th-ranked Roberta
Vinci of Italy to set up a second-round match against No. 2-seeded
Maria Sharapova, who had a first-round bye. Urszula Radwanska of Poland
beat Tamira Paszek of Austria 2-6, 6-0, 6-2 and Slovakia’s Daniela
Hantuchova had a 7-5, 6-2 win over Lourdes Dominguez Lino of Spain.