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Serena Williams walked up to the baseline down match point fully conscious of the fact that losing another point would be no tragedy. Four years since her last singles appearance as a professional tennis player, she had been competitive against a talented young player and she had fought hard for every point.

However, Williams has always been so demanding of herself and old habits die hard. Serving down 5-6 in her second set tie‑break after losing the first set against Maya Joint, Williams unleashed the greatest weapon the sport has seen: after an excellent first serve allowed her to dispatch an easy forehand winner to save match point, she eviscerated a 122 miles per hour service winner straight down the middle and rode her momentum into a final set.

On a remarkable occasion under the Centre Court roof, Williams offered a supreme exhibition of the fighting spirit behind her legendary career but her return to professional tennis from retirement still ended in a tough defeat as the 23-time grand slam singles champion was outlasted by an opponent 24 years her junior, losing 3-6, 7-6 (6), 6-3 against the Australian player Maya Joint in the first round of Wimbledon.

Joint described her win as the realisation of a dream. “I didn’t get much sleep last night, I was up to 2am thinking about it,” she said. “Walking out, I forgot the warm-up, I don’t know what happened. My legs weren’t moving.

“I got a pretty good start in the match. She has such an aura, she is such a legend. So many huge names have played on this court. I have been dreaming of this moment since I was a little kid, so this is pretty crazy.”

As she reappeared through the doors of Centre Court four years later, Williams’s audience stood in unison to mark the return of its queen. A long shout of “let’s go Serena”, just as the first cheers were fading out, provoked a second, even greater wave of adulation.

For all the success, wins and historical feats Williams has achieved on these grounds, she has not always garnered the full support of the crowds she has entertained for nearly three decades. But on this occasion, 15,000 spectators urged her on.

There is no shame in this defeat. Williams’s serve remains a work of art, a singular shot regardless of how much time has passed. She also showed glimpses of her incredible ball striking underneath four years of rust and she competed brilliantly until the end. However, Williams was outplayed from the baseline and she faded physically in the final set.

There has never been a competitor like Williams in this sport, a player who refused to accept anything but winning, and so the seven-time Wimbledon singles champion’s decision to return in singles has been particularly striking.

At 44 years old, after four years of retirement and as the second-oldest woman to play a singles match at Wimbledon in the open era, not even Williams, with all the self-confidence that accompanies her singular career, entered this tennis tournament with sky high expectations.

Considering her time away from the sport, her age and her lack of match preparation, Williams herself could not have known what her game would look like under competitive pressure. Still, she was bold enough to throw herself back into the arena in order to find out.

The good news for the American early on was that her two most important shots were immediately intact. Williams’s serve was supreme from the beginning. She rolled through her opening service game to love and then eviscerated a 121mph ace down the T to hold for 3-3. She also returned with depth and consistency throughout the first set.

However, Williams’s poor movement and footwork around the ball left her vulnerable in any extended baseline exchange. When Joint forced herself to take the ball early and pulled her from the middle of the court, Williams usually did not recover. She was also tentative from the baseline, her error count rising sharply whenever she tried to shorten points and inject pace into her ground strokes. She soon trailed 3-6, 1-3 after Joint had rolled through five consecutive games.

But Williams fought desperately and as her competitive juices flowed, she gradually began to find her range, her cleanest and most destructive stretch of ballstriking coming as she trailed throughout the second set. After dragging herself into a second set tie‑break, Williams faced match point at 5-6. She responded with more incredible serving to force a final set.

As Williams broke serve first in set three to establish a break lead, it seemed like Williams might pull off the unthinkable when she rode her momentum to an early 2-1 lead. But after more than two hours of competing at the highest level, fatigue slowly began to set in. In the end, her 20-year-old opponent recovered to close out the most memorable night of her young career with a win.