Serena Williams has already started her 2019 season on sure-footing. The tennis champion won the first round of the Australian Open in Melbourne on Monday, when she bested Germany’s Tatjana Maria in a 49-minute match. After her win—completed in a green Nike jumpsuit, which the athlete described as a “Serena-tard”—she embraced her opponent rather than celebrating her victory alone.
This win marks a significant comeback for Williams when it comes to the Australian Open: she pulled out of the same competition last year, saying that her game wasn’t where she wanted it to be after giving birth in September 2017.
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In January 2017, Williams won the Australian Open while pregnant; she found out that she was expecting just before the tournament began. As she told Vanity Fair in June of 2017, the news came as a shock. She’d taken the pregnancy test as a joke and to prove her friend Jessica Steindorff wrong about her suspicions.
Williams said she “did a double take and my heart dropped. Like literally it dropped.” She couldn’t believe it: “Oh my God, this can’t be—I’ve got to play a tournament. How am I going to play the Australian Open? I had planned on winning Wimbledon this year.”
At a post-match press event, Williams said that she wore her already-popular green getup to make a statement about her return to Melbourne.
“I wanted to be fit,” she said. “I came back. Nike always wants to make an incredibly strong, powerful statement for moms that are trying to get back and get fit,” she said. “That was basically it for me.”
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