AUCKLAND, New Zealand — Half a world and four months removed from her last match, Serena Williams slowly but surely settled in as she faced her first test of the season.
After hitting several wrong notes, Williams tuned her game to orchestrate a 6-3, 6-4 victory over 71st-ranked Pauline Parmentier of France on Tuesday in the first round of the ASB Classic, a WTA tournament that serves as a warm-up for the Australian Open this month.
“I definitely felt that rust, but I felt like mentally I knew how to get it back and I knew how to get in there,” she said.