Eventually, this looked a little bit like one of those Serena Williams comebacks of old, filled with brilliant strokes and full-throated screams of “Come on!”

For the first half-hour in the French Open second round on Wednesday, the 23-time grand slam singles champion played the way you would expect from someone competing at her first major in 16 months – and the first since she gave birth to a daughter last September. And then, suddenly, Williams was back. Erasing a deficit of a set and a break, Williams recalibrated her shots and beat 17th-seeded Ashleigh Barty 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 in a match that ended shortly before dusk.

“I lost the first set, and I thought, ‘I’ve got to try harder. I’ve got to just try harder.’ And Serena came out,” Williams told the crowd, leaning forward and breaking into laughter. “Every day is a great day for me. I’m going to be here, fighting my heart out. It’s such a great feeling.”

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Williams had all sorts of trouble against her Australian opponent in the opening set, compiling 12 unforced errors. By the time the second set was merely one game old, she had been broken twice in the match, each time to love, a troubling development for the owner of one of her sport’s most dangerous serves.

But then she started letting herself be heard. Exhorting herself and celebrating key moments along the path back, Williams grabbed four consecutive games over a span of less than 15 minutes to lead 4-1 in the second set, which soon enough would be hers. She gained control of the third almost immediately, breaking to go ahead 2-1, then holding for 3-1.

When Williams served out the victory with a backhand winner down the line, she raised both arms overhead and held up her left fist as she approached the net to meet Barty. In the stands, Williams’ coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, shook his fist.

After statistics that were so negatively lopsided in that initial set, in which she managed to produce only three winners, Williams straightened things out, to the tune of 25 winners the rest of the way.

Not bad for someone who hasn’t played in one of tennis’ four most important events since January 2017, when she won the Australian Open while pregnant. Williams is ranked only 451st this week, because of her extended absence from the tour. She had played only four matches going 2-2 all season until this week. Next for Williams is a third-round match against the No11 seed, Julia Goerges of Germany. Get through that, and Williams would face either her old rival Maria Sharapova or another former world No1, Karolina Pliskova. There is family history too: Williams beat Pliskova’s twin sister, Kristyna, in the first round.



