AFP, Paris :
Fresh from attending the Royal wedding, Serena Williams will take aim at the upstarts who have been honeymooning at the majors in her absence when she makes her long-awaited Grand Slam return at Roland Garros.
The 36-year-old American, who first played the French Open in 1998, has been the champion in Paris three times.
Should she win a fourth Roland Garros, it will take her level with Margaret Court’s all-time Grand Slam record of 24 majors.
But there are question marks over her fitness and readiness for the 2018 tournament which starts on Sunday.
She has played just four matches on the WTA Tour all year, the last of which was a first round loss in Miami at the end of March.
Her last appearance at a Slam was at the 2017 Australian Open which she won while pregnant.
Having then missed the rest of the season as she gave birth to daughter Alexis Olympia in September, Williams’s world ranking has slumped to 454 from its dizzy heights of undisputed number one.
“I’m not just coming back to come back. I’m coming back to win,” she said defiantly in a HBO documentary ‘Being Serena’ which aired last week.
Her longtime coach Patrick Mouratoglou, who oversaw her first training session on Court Philippe Chatrier at Roland Garros on Sunday, has no doubts that Williams’s competitive streak has not been blunted by the priorities of motherhood.
“Serena will play the French Open to win it,” he told the WTA Tour.
“Can she do it? Serena can achieve anything — after being her coach for six years, I’m even more sure of that statement.”
In her absence — as well as the 15-month doping ban served by longtime rival and five-time major winner Maria Sharapova — there’s been a stampede to get on the Grand Slam honours board before normal service is resumed.
Unheralded Latvian Jelena Ostapenko won last year’s French Open, Sloane Stephens was an equally surprising champion at the US Open before Caroline Wozniacki finally converted potential into Slam success by taking Serena’s Australian Open title in January this year.
Needing to use a protected ranking to get into the main draw in Paris, no-one will want to face a fired-up Serena in the opening rounds in a tournament and city which has given her many highs as well as the occasional low.
