TORONTO — Given its beginning, Serena Williams’s hardcourt season may well look like the clay and grass-court campaigns that preceded it. And her march toward a calendar-year Grand Slam will most likely require stepping into potholes along the way.
For her first match at the Rogers Cup — a tournament she first won in 2001 and last won in 2013 — Williams followed the occasionally mysteriously unsettling formula that carried her to titles at the Australian and French Opens, and then Wimbledon.
As she had done seven times this Grand Slam season, she played a listless first set, falling behind the 26th-ranked Flavia Pennetta of Italy before rallying in a persistent wind for a 2-6, 6-3, 6-0 second-round victory following a first-round bye.