By DAVID WALDSTEIN
WIMBLEDON, England — On a warm opening day at Wimbledon that went pretty much according to expectations, the fist pumps and shouts somehow seemed out of place.
Serena Williams, the No. 1 seed, screamed in exultation Monday when her opponent hit into the net, but her reaction was more appropriate to a match in a later round against a high-ranked opponent than to a first-round encounter with an inexperienced qualifier.
But Williams needed an emotional kick-start after having been broken in the first game and only points away from trailing, 4-0, in the first set. Her exhortations ultimately helped her zero in and overwhelm Margarita Gasparyan of Russia, 6-4, 6-1.
By the time Williams had the match under control, her outbursts had become more restrained. When she won, on an overpowering overhead slam, she merely stood at the net and waited to shake Gasparyan’s hand after a match of 1 hour 22 minutes.
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It was a methodical first step in Williams’s quest for her 21st singles title at a major tournament and yet another step toward a calendar-year Grand Slam. She won the Australian Open and the French Open and needs Wimbledon and the United States Open to accomplish the Slam, last achieved by Steffi Graf in 1988. If Williams wins here, it will also leave her one short of Graf’s career record of 22 major singles titles in the Open era. Margaret Court won 24 Grand Slam singles titles.
“It’s definitely historic, I guess,” Williams said. “But it’s also six matches away. It’s definitely not guaranteed.”
Indeed, Williams has struggled at Wimbledon in recent years, losing to Alizé Cornet in the third round last year and to Sabine Lisicki in the fourth round in 2013. But she has had a terrific year and has won the last three Grand Slam tournaments, beginning with the 2014 United States Open. At the French Open in May, she was not at her best but was still able to win.
That form followed her here Monday, although Gasparyan, whose aggressive approach seemed to unsettle Williams early on, deserved credit for her initial display of fine tennis, including a rare one-handed backhand.
Rustiness may have been Williams’s biggest problem. She had not played competitively since Roland Garros, although she and her sister, Venus, hit on the Hall of Fame golfer Jack Nicklaus’s grass courts in Florida before traveling to Wimbledon.
The Williams sisters could face each other in the fourth round. Venus Williams beat a fellow American, Madison Brengle, 6-0, 6-0, in 42 minutes. Venus Williams’s victory Monday was easier, but she knows that her younger sister has the better chance to add to her already remarkable run through tennis history.
“We’re all amazed at what she’s done, really,” Venus Williams said.
Novak Djokovic of Serbia, the No. 1 seed in the men’s draw, also skipped the competitive grass-court warm-up tournaments leading to Wimbledon, but he did not require the same emotional spark Williams did. He dispatched Philipp Kohlschreiber of Germany, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4, in what had initially been deemed a dangerous matchup when the draw was announced.
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Djokovic was efficient and had little problem in stopping Kohlschreiber, double-faulting only once in the match and needing little more than two hours to advance. Kohlschreiber said that he thought he had had one small chance early in the match but that it had seemed to melt quickly in the heat.
“After that, he was in his mode,” Kohlschreiber said.
Djokovic almost seemed to have more trouble after the match when he faced more questions about whether his coach, the former Wimbledon champion Boris Becker, had been signaling tactics to him from his box, which is against the rules.
Djokovic grew irritated at the line of questioning for a second day.
“Do you want to say that I’m cheating?” Djokovic asked. “My team? I’m really trying to figure out what’s behind this.”
In a radio interview over the weekend, Becker suggested that signs were sometimes transmitted, which Djokovic denied.
“I’m going to say that there are certain ways of communication, which is encouragement,” he said, “and which is support, which is understanding the moment when to clap or say something that can lift my energy up, that can kind of motivate me to play a certain point. But it’s all within the rules. If I am breaking any rules, or my team is, I would be fined for that, right?”
Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland, the No. 4 seed, beat Djokovic in the French Open final but is not considered as effective on grass, with his powerful groundstrokes limited by the velocity of the balls coming his way. But he beat Joao Sousa of Portugal, 6-2, 7-5, 7-6 (3). Among the top players, Kei Nishikori of Japan, seeded fifth, had the most trouble, requiring five sets to beat Simone Bolelli of Italy, 6-3, 6-7 (4), 6-2, 3-6, 6-3, in 3:22.
One minor upset involved the No. 24 seed, Flavia Pennetta of Italy, who lost to Zarina Diyas of Kazakhstan, 6-3, 2-6, 6-4.
It was a warm day, and out on a raucous Court 14, Fernando Verdasco of Spain felt the heat, requiring 24 games in the fifth set to beat Martin Klizan of Slovakia, 4-6, 6-2, 6-3, 6-7 (5), 13-11. In the coming days, it is expected to be unusually warm.
“We’ll see how it affects the condition of the courts,” Venus Williams said. “I’ve never really played at the Championships when it was really warm.”