Serena Williams loses for only the second time in 2015

TORONTO -- Serena Williams suffered only her second loss of 2015 Saturday evening, as Switzerland teenager Belinda Bencic recorded the biggest win of her career in a 3-6, 7-5, 6-4 upset at the Rogers Cup semifinals. The stunning result continues a remarkable week for the 18-year-old Bencic, adding the world number one to her impressive list of victories in Toronto that also include knocking off Eugenie Bouchard, Caroline Wozniacki, Sabine Lisicki and Ana Ivanovic.

It seemed things would go as according to plan when the legendary Williams routinely took the opening set in 32 minutes. The 21-time Grand Slam champion, who is seeking a calendar Grand Slam at the US Open, was solid enough from the baseline and produced quality second serves to leave Bencic looking for any hope just to be competitive. But at the start of the second set, Serena’s ball toss on serve began floating out of her contact point, with her toss sometimes floating to her right. That slight but important hitch in her serve lead to her double fault total increasing from two in the first set to eight in the second. That allowed Bencic to become noticeably more aggressive on Williams’ second serve and helped change the dynamics of a match thought to be a warm-up for Serena for tomorrow’s final against Simona Halep. Instead, it served as a rare defeat that has her pondering what happened.

"Yeah, I was just really struggling with my serve today," Williams said. "And everything wasn’t right with it. My toss was off, and just struggling to try and get that normal lift off, but didn’t work out."

Williams lost the feel of the court completely in the third set, going down both 4-0 and 5-1. But as always the case, one can never count Serena Williams out in any match, as she was on the verge of producing another of her many comebacks. A clutch next two games from the Australian, French and Wimbledon winner pushed the final set score to 5-3. She then saw a nervous Bencic double fault to allow her back on serve at 5-4, but to the credit of her growing maturation, Bencic calmed herself down and produced stable, confident tennis. On match point, she hit a fine backhand up the line that forced Serena to deliver a short reply, only for Bencic to calmly place a down-the-line forehand winner and drop to her knees in joy.

A more than exuberant Bencic chimed in on her biggest win that propels the promising adolescent to the biggest match of her career, a Premier 5 title match with third-ranked Halep on Sunday.

"I can’t describe the feeling right now," Bencic said. "I was very overwhelmed from the situation on the court, but I’m so happy that the forehand landed in and she couldn’t reach it anymore. It was an incredible feeling. I have no words."

Bencic joins Petra Kvitova as the only two players now to defeat Williams this year. Although any loss is tough to swallow, Williams is glad that a second defeat in 2015 happened in Toronto and not at the U.S. Open in a few weeks time.

"Every loss for me is a big learning session and a learning experience," she said. "So I’m looking forward to learning and getting better from this."