PARIS—For a while, it looked like old times—bad old times for Serena Williams. The air was damp and chilly, the skies over Roland Garros were soiled and growing darker by the moment, and Caroline Garcia had just won a point destined for the highlight reel. She plucked a Williams blast off her shoe tops on the half-volley, and the ball fell gently over the net. Williams raced up and flicked up a lob, but Garcia turned contortionist and speared a backhand overhead into the open court.
That put Garcia up, 30-15 in the fourth game of the second set, and a chant of “Caro, Caro, Caro” rolled down from the French partisans. It was on this same court, under these same gloomy conditions, one year ago, that Serena Williams—fourth match on, just like today—struggled to fend off the challenge of a different French player, Virginie Razzano. And we all know how that turned out.
Today, Williams was leading, 6-1, 3-1, but you know how it is when you tempt fate. Often, fate will turn on you and take a great big bite out of your you-know-what. Williams seemed aware of this; she dug in her heels, yet this was a different Garcia from that Jerry Garcia, or Cherry Garcia, whom she’d been beating up on for the previous 45 minutes.
Suddenly, the lithe, leggy Caroline Garcia seemed about to make a run. After that spectacular windmill overhead that had carried Garcia to 30-15, she watched an unreturnable service return whistle by. She won the next point, only to see Williams push the score to deuce. Garcia got the ad with a powerful drive volley off the serviced return. Williams forced another deuce, but Garcia then hit a forehand winner and won the game when Serena misplayed another backhand serve return. Now it was 2-3.
“Caro. . .Caro . . .Caro. . .”
And out on Court 2, the very same Virgine Razzano had rebounded from a set and a break down to slowly pull ahead of Zuzana Kucova. Cue the spooky House of Horrors music; you could almost hear it being piped over the public address system in Court Philippe Chatrier.
As it turned out, though, that 2-3 moment was as close as Garcia would get. Williams seemed a tad shaken, and started the next game with a forehand error—along with a squeak of displeasure. But she kept her composure, blocked out any thought or vibe she might have entertained about last year’s disaster, and calmly drilled a fine forehand passing shot by Garcia’s outstretched racquet.
And then it was Serena time: She belted a pair of service winners, and her opponent demonstrated once again that it’s very, very easy to get discouraged when Williams is finding the box with her first serve. Still in with a slim shot at 40-15 for Williams, Garcia drilled a forehand serve return out, and the crisis dissolved into the gloaming. Serena hit two winners and an unreturnable in the next game, and converted her first break point to nudge the score to 5-2.
Serena served it out for a 6-1, 6-2 win. And at almost the same moment, Razzano secured her passage to the third round, too. But don’t you worry, they’re unlikely to get any closer to each other than they were in the ether today, given their placements in the draw.
For more on Serena, Garcia, and the rest of Day 4 at Roland Garros, listen to today's Podcast from Paris.