Serena stutters as duel begins

Serena Williams made a stuttering start to her bid to topple Dinara Safina from the world number one spot with an error-strewn 7-5 6-4 win over Estonian Kaia Kanepi in the first round of the China Open yesterday.

Safina, who must at least match Williams’s progress over the week in Beijing to retain the number one ranking, was equally unconvincing in her 6-4 6-4 victory over Italian Roberta Vinci earlier in the day.

Williams missed last week’s Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo with knee and toe injuries and looked far from her best yesterday.

The Australian Open and Wimbledon champion made nine unforced errors with five double faults in the 83-minute encounter against the big-hitting Kanepi, who broke the American three times.

The second seed, though, always looked to have the edge on the big points and claimed her place in the second round of the $6.6 million event with a fifth break of serve when world no.48 Kanepi went long.

Top seed Safina’s victory over 59th-ranked Vinci was certainly an improvement on her first-round loss to Taiwanese qualifier Chang Kai-chen at the Pan Pacific Open last week but was by no means commanding.

Broken early in both sets, Safina immediately evened matters up with breaks of her own but was then forced to scrap it out with the dogged Italian to claim victory in a little under 90 minutes.

“I’m satisfied with the match but there is still room to improve my game,” said the 23-year-old.

“I’m not thinking about (the ranking). I just think about the game. I think I am the 16th, 17th in the world to reach no.1 so it doesn’t matter when you achieve it.”