The 2014 season started with promise for Venus Williams.  The aging seven-time major champion reached the final at her first tournament of the season in Auckland and gave Ana Ivanovic a serious test there on the eve of the Serb’s strong fortnight in Melbourne.  At the Australian Open, Venus fared as well as one could expect considering a brutal first-round draw.  She fell to Ekaterina Makarova, who had reached quarterfinals there in 2012 and 2013, but she overcame her energy-sapping Sjogren’s Syndrome to produce high-quality tennis for most of their tightly contested encounter.

At the Premier Five event in Doha, the draw again did Venus no favors.  Set to face world No. 6 Petra Kvitova in the second round, she needed to conserve as much as energy as possible in her opening match against qualifier Petra Martic.  And Venus did exactly that, dismissing an opponent of some talent in two routine sets.  She faced only one break point in the match and committed only two double faults.  Those are promising signs for her marquee clash with Kvitova on Wednesday, although Venus will want to raise her first-serve percentage higher than the 56% that she produced on Monday.

The American champion should bring plenty of optimism to her battle with a fellow Wimbledon champion.  This pair met twice in 2012-13 with Kvitova near her prime and Venus in slow decline.  Despite their contrasting trajectories, Venus won one of those matches in Miami two years ago and nearly won the second in Tokyo last fall.  Moreover, she has enjoyed notable success in Doha before.  Venus won the year-end championships on this court when it hosted the event in 2008, arguably her most significant hard-court title since winning the US Open over a decade ago.

Monday did not produce good news for every American in action, however.  Returning from a minor injury, world No. 18 Sloane Stephens fell to an opponent who had caused her trouble before.  Stephens has faced Petra Cetkovska at Wimbledon in each of the last two years.  While she prevailed on both occasions, each victory came in a tight three-set affair that could have tilted in either direction.  Cetkovska’s ranking has slipped to No. 134 entering the week, in part because the 29-year-old Czech missed four and a half months of the 2013 season with an injury.  She is far more dangerous than that current position suggests, and she proved it by upsetting an American ranked over 100 places higher.

In each of their Wimbledon meetings, Stephens had eked out the first set via a tiebreak.  A close first set developed again, and this time Cetkovska turned the tables by outplaying Stephens at key moments.  With that 7-5 opener in hand, she cruised through the second set to a fairly straightforward victory.  Cetkovska had needed to qualify for the Doha main draw, which could have proved a blessing in disguise by giving her more opportunity to adjust to the courts and conditions in the Persian Gulf.  She will fancy her chances of prevailing again on Wednesday against one of two journeywomen.  Afterwards, however, a clash with Australian Open champion and world No. 3 Li Na would loom.

During the 2013 campaign that Stephens compiled, a breakthrough by any measure, consistency at non-majors remained a notable Achilles heel.  Majors may define a player’s legacy, but a rising talent like the American cannot afford to fall off so starkly in results between those four tournaments and the rest.  The start of 2014 has extended this trend so far with a second-week appearance at the Australian Open and a first-round exit in Doha.  Coach Paul Annacone surely will work with Stephens on improving this area of her game.

Two more Americans face challenging first-round tests in Doha on Tuesday.  Veteran Bethanie-Mattek-Sands will hope that her experience serves her well against Australian Open semifinalist Eugenie Bouchard, while Varvara Lepchenko will aim to subdue the powerful first strikes of Estonian Kaia Kanepi.