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“This year has been a dream come true,” Andreescu said at the trophy ceremony. Asked what she had overcome on Saturday, she said, “definitely the crowd.” Then she offered a most Canadian response: “I know you guys wanted Serena to win,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

Handed the trophy, she could be heard asking which side was the front. It was yet another sign how new all this is to her.

She would say afterward that, when the crowd was roaring and Williams seemed on the verge of making a miraculous comeback, she “had some doubts.”

“I mean, it was expected,” Andreescu said. “She’s a champion. That’s what champions do. She’s done that many, many times throughout her career. But I just tried to stay as composed as I could. It’s hard to just block everything out, but I think I did a pretty good job of that.”

It took almost no time at all for the reliably unflappable Andreescu to show that on this stage, the biggest possible one in tennis, she would remain utterly unflapped. She hung in the points in the first game of the match, with Wlliams serving, making her work hard right from the jump. Williams eventually double-faulted to drop the game, handing Andreescu a quick early advantage.

Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images

As the set wore on, with the two women slugging the ball back and forth, Andreescu utterly refused to be intimated. She served brilliantly, and kept bashing deep balls that had Williams on her heels, followed by rocket forehands to finish off points. More importantly, she stayed in points — and games — enough to allow Williams to make mistakes. The 23-time Grand Slam champ made 14 unforced errors in the first set, to just six from the player doing this kind of thing for the first time.