Serena Williams Loses in First Round

When the ball bounced beyond the baseline, Williams rushed around the net and embraced her Tuesday tormentor, Virginie Razzano of France, who is ranked 111th in the world. The crowd stood in unison and roared as if she had won the tournament. Razzano bent over in pain and lingered there, at once dazed and elated.

She had done something no one had ever done to Williams, the greatest women’s player of her generation: hand her a first-round loss in a Grand Slam tournament, the first of which Williams played in 1998.

In an on-court interview, Razzano called her triumph, first round and all, the best victory of her career. This time last year, she played a first-round match at Roland Garros eight days after her fiancé and coach, Stephane Vidal, died at 32 from the cancer he battled for nine years. She wore a black ribbon, and she lost.

On Tuesday, Razzano channeled a career performance, through a series of questionable hindrance calls that went against her, against an opponent whose patented intensity surfaced far too late. As the crowd serenaded Razzano, she waved and smiled and pumped her fist, her 4-6, 7-6 (5), 6-3 victory complete.

In the interview room afterward, Williams assigned blame to her own errors. She pronounced herself 100 percent healthy, made no excuses and said more than once, “You know, that’s life.”

When asked about Razzano and her backstory, a look of consternation crossed Williams’s face. She again conceded nothing, mentioning her family’s recent health scares, both her own and that of her sister Venus.

“I know her story,” said Williams, seeded fifth here. “We all have stories. I mean, I almost died and Venus is struggling herself. It’s life. It just depends on how you deal with it.”

The final game went on for more than 20 minutes, the drama high, the tension thick. Williams had led by 5-1 in the second-set tiebreaker, back when victory seemed all but assured, back when Razzano seemed like a tough early test.

Williams lost the final six points of that set and the first five games of the next one. It was a meltdown as epic and complete as any in her career. She stamped around the clay, glared at her racket and screamed at the heavens. She often appeared on the brink of tears.

Still, as improbable as it seemed, the question lingered, because Serena Williams is Serena Williams, the alpha female of women’s tennis: Could she come back?

At the Australian Open in 2003, Williams fell behind in a first-round match to Emilie Loit, another Frenchwoman. But Williams rallied, won the match and won the tournament, completing her so-called Serena Slam by holding each of the four major titles at one time. She has won 13 Grand Slam singles titles in her career.

Down by 5-0 in the final set Tuesday, Williams went quiet. She stopped stamping, stopped whining, stopped gesturing at the box her family watched from. She put her proverbial game face on as the comeback started.

She clawed back to 5-3, momentum shifted, and the crowd, clearly against Williams now, implored Razzano on. Williams faced her first match point 2:46 into the match. She would face seven more as she and Razzano traded break points and match points in a game that included 30 total points and 12 deuces.

The game continued in spectacular fashion, as Williams’s father, Richard, disappeared from the stands. Razzano missed by an inch one backhand down the line that would have won it. Williams repelled another match point with her own backhand winner on the outside of the line.

When the match ended, the celebration started. Williams had lost early in other majors — as in the second round of the Australian Open in 1998, to her sister Venus — but never this early, never as one of the presumed favorites.

She was coming off a strong clay-court season, winning titles at Charleston and at Madrid and reaching the semifinals at Rome before withdrawing with a back injury. Ten American women advanced to the second round, and yet the best of them all, one of the best ever, had not.

The sidebar in defeat was the umpire Eva Asderaki, who called Williams for an intentional hindrance in the United States Open final last year, costing her a point and a game against Samantha Stosur, who eventually won the title. Williams famously told Asderaki, “I truly despise you.”

Williams took a shot at Asderaki in her news conference, saying: “She’s not a favorite amongst the tour. I just really had a flashback.” Still, Asderaki made enough calls against Razzano that the mostly French crowd booed the umpire as she left the court.

On Tuesday, the best and the worst of Williams surfaced. Her best came during the final game, when she fought off match point after match point, grunting and fist-pumping and taking chances when most players would tense. Her worst came late into the second set and most of the way through the third.

The crowd that saw these sides of Williams also saw her as they had never seen her — bag packed, stalking toward the locker room, exiting a Grand Slam tournament in the first round.

NOTES

Rafael Nadal began his quest for a record seventh French Open title by beating Simone Bolelli of Italy, 6-2, 6-2, 6-1. Andy Murray started his French Open campaign by defeating Tatsuma Ito of Japan, 6-1, 7-5, 6-0. In women’s matches, Maria Sharapova won in a 6-0, 6-0 romp over Alexandra Cadantu. Petra Kvitova’s experience was too much for the 16-year-old Ashleigh Barty. Kvitova, the 2011 Wimbledon champion, defeated Barty, the junior Wimbledon champion, 6-1, 6-2.