“After I lost the second set, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I have to do my best because this could be it,’” Williams told ESPN in a courtside interview after the match.
Williams looked better than previous matches this year, still trying to shake off the rust from a long layoff.
However, in world No.2 Kontaveit, Williams faced a much sterner test and was undoubtedly the underdog on paper, but certainly not with a full house at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
A rowdy but behaved crowd cheered every point.
She alluded to the long layoff in her interview Wednesday, but said, “I love a challenge.”
Williams will next face Australian Ajla Tomljanovic in the third round. Tomljanovic, playing alongside Williams on Wednesday, defeated Russian Evgeniya Rodina 1-6, 6-2, 7-5.
And Williams doesn’t just play singles; she opens doubles play with her sister Venus Williams on Thursday night.
“I need more matches,” she told ESPN. “I love taking on the challenge. Yeah, I haven’t played a lot of games, but I’ve been practicing really well. In my last few games, it just didn’t come together. I’m like, this is not me.”
Things have changed since she started playing at the Open, she said.
She began singles play on Monday with a 6-3 6-3 win over Danka Kovinić of Montenegro. It was Williams’ third match since announcing in Vogue magazine that she will “evolve away from tennis” after the US Open.
“I’ve never liked the word pension. It doesn’t feel like a modern word to me. I’ve thought of this as a transition, but I want to be sensitive about how I use that word, which means something very specific and important to a community of people,” Williams said in the Vogue article published earlier this month.
“Maybe the best word to describe what I’m going through is evolution. I’m here to tell you that I’m evolving away from tennis, towards other things that are important to me,” she said .
In her post-match press conference on Monday, Williams was asked if this is definitely her last tournament.
“Yeah, I’ve been pretty vague about it, haven’t I?” she said with a smile. “I’ll stay vague because you never know.”
The opening round win over Kovinić was the best Serena Williams has looked since coming back from injury. She has managed to win just one match since returning to the circuit in June and has been unable to come close to the form that helped her win her last grand slam title in 2017.
Although Williams was still some way off that level in Monday’s win over Kovinić, it will surely have given her hope that her final dance at the US Open could be extended.
One of the greatest tennis players of all time, Williams has won 23 grand slam singles titles and has won the US Open six times, most recently in 2014. Now 40 years old, Williams’ career will come full circle as her final match — whatever round that holds said to be — to be played at the site of the first of her grand slam singles victories, the 1999 US Open.
Just a teenager, Williams burst onto the scene to shock world No. 1 Martina Hingis in the final, laying the first stepping stone on her path to two decades of dominance.
Kontaveit is a rising star
After Kontaveit won her first Tour-level title in 2017, her true breakout year came in 2021, when she won four WTA tournaments to climb through the rankings.
An aggressive player with a varied game and powerful forehand, Kontaveit broke into the world’s top 10 for the first time in November 2021 and has been a mainstay ever since.
She sits at a career-high ranking of No. 2 – the highest ranking in history for an Estonian – and, at the age of 26, will surely look to improve on her best result at a grand slam, a quarter-final appearance at the 2020 Australian Open .
Kontaveit looked impressive in her opening-round US Open win over Romania’s Jaqueline Cristian as she dropped just three games, saying after her victory that she “rooted” for Williams in her first-round match and is “really excited” to to play against her.
“I’ve never played against her. I mean, this is the last chance,” she told reporters. “Better late than never.
“I’m really excited. I think the atmosphere is going to be great. I’m really looking forward to it.”
CNN’s Steve Almasy contributed to this report.