Serena goes distance, punches ticket to semis

4:09 PM ET

PARIS — Defending champion Serena Williams pulled out quite a comeback in the French Open quarterfinals Thursday, coming back from a set and a break down to beat 60th-ranked Yulia Putintseva 5-7, 6-4, 6-1.

How close was Williams to her earliest exit at a Grand Slam tournament since Wimbledon in 2014? Putintseva, who is from Kazakhstan and ranked only 60th, twice was a point from serving for the biggest victory of her career.

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“She played unbelievable. And I honestly didn’t think I was going to win that in the second set,” said Williams, who will face another unseeded opponent, 58th-ranked Kiki Bertens of the Netherlands, in the semifinals. “Somehow I did.”

Bertens beat eighth-seeded Timea Bacsinszky 7-5, 6-2.

According to ESPN Stats & Information, it was the 36th time — the most since 1968 — that Williams dropped the first set of a match in a Grand Slam event only to rally and win. Chris Event is second on that list with 28 victories after losing the first set and then winning a match.

Williams came through, as she so often does, overcoming not only a relentless competitor in Putintseva but also her own shakiness on a cloudy, chilly day that included a brief rain delay in the third game. The No. 1-seeded American’s strokes were off and her range was wrong, to the tune of mistake after mistake after mistake.

Serena Williams dropped her first set of the tournament to Yulia Putintseva and then fought off two break points in the second that would have allowed the unseeded Russian to serve for the match. Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

She made 11 unforced errors before Putintseva committed one, and at the end of the first set, the …

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