Serena Williams shrugs off slow start to speed into third round

Miami: World number one Serena Williams overcame a wobbly start to open the defence of her Sony Open crown with a spirited 7-6(9-7) 6-2 win over Kazakhstan`s Yaroslava Shvedova on Thursday.

A six-time winner on the Miami hardcourts, Williams` second round meeting with the 59th-ranked Shvedova was expected to be little more than a tuneup for the 17-time grand slam winner but for a brief moment the match delivered some unexpected suspense. "She was doing a little bit of everything," Williams told reporters. "She was hitting hard; she was hitting soft; she was doing a little bit of everything. "I was making a little more errors than what I should have been making, what I should`ve made, and that kind of threw me for a loop, as well. "She was up a break (in the first set) and I started just really trying to fight to make the shots. "And then when she was serving for the first set I really just tried to be more Serena like." The contest began with Williams seizing control 3-1 but Shvedova had a sparse centre court crowd buzzing after breaking the American twice on the way to a 5-3 lead. But with Shvedova serving for the match, Williams showed why she is the sport`s dominant player breaking her opponent and forcing the opening set to a tiebreak. In the tiebreak, Shvedova, who had never taken a set off Williams in three previous meetings, surged ahead 6-3 but then crumbled under the mounting pressure, double-faulting before the defending champion blasted a pair of aces past her. Williams then clinched the set in emphatic fashion, a crushing forehand followed by an equally forceful fist-pump. "It felt really good, relieved is a good word," said Williams about pulling out the first set win. "I felt really relieved to finish it and to get on with the second set. "It was a little over an hour, and I was ready to move on. I was kind of over it. "I was like, win, lose or draw, let`s start the next set." After trading breaks to open the second set, Shvedova would hold serve before a focused Williams moved in for the kill, sweeping the next five games to secure passage to the next round. "It`s definitely going to help, knowing that I was able to pull that through after being down pretty drastically," said Williams. Williams will now face Frenchwoman Caroline Garcia who advanced to the third round with a 7-6 (7-3) 7-6 (7-3) upset of 27th seed Klara Zakopalova of the Czech Republic.