MELBOURNE, Australia -- U.S. Open champion Serena Williams fumbled through mistiming, wild shooting and foot faults before surviving her Australian Open first-round match 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 against 261st-ranked Amanda Grahame on Tuesday.

The third seed needed two hours to beat the Australian wild-card entry, playing in her first Grand Slam tournament and enjoying thundering support from a home crowd of nearly 14,000.

	No. 3 Serena Williams needed two hours to beat Amanda Grahame.

"It was just out of control," said Williams, who committed 55 unforced errors -- 23 in the second set -- in her first match in three months.

The match was interrupted for 35 minutes by rain, in the midst of a seven-deuce game as Grahame scored her second break of the second set to take a 4-1 lead. Play resumed after the stadium roof was closed.

Williams was called for eight foot faults, and sometimes punctuated her mistimed shots with "Oh, oh!"

Grahame, 20, attacked Williams with a strong left-handed serve, mixed up her pace and kept her nerve even when Williams broke for a 4-2 lead in the final set.

Grahame immediately broke back on four errors by the 18-year-old Williams, and in the final game saved two match points before bowing out with two errors.

Grahame said that at 4-4 in third, she thought she had a chance.

"It is just an incredible experience playing on center court and against Serena Williams, and I should get a lot of confidence out of that," she added.

The standing ovation at the end "was just overwhelming," Grahame said.

Williams' mother and coach, Oracene, said Serena had arrived only Friday, still had jet lag and had not yet found her legs.

"It's now 7 a.m. my time," Serena said of the time in Florida. "My legs usually get started back around 8, so they should be working in about 55 minutes."

She also said a back injury had suddenly recurred, cutting short her practice earlier in the day, "but I feel I can continue through."

Williams said that at first she had planned to skip the Australian Open to take some time off from tennis and go to her design classes, but "I'm glad I came."

She also said she had been told her red shoes were responsible for all the foot fault calls, "but I'm not giving up the red shoes. I'm just going to move back."

Her older sister Venus, ranked No. 3, stayed home with tendinitis in her wrist.

"She's taking care of the dogs," Serena said.

In contrasting style, Martina Hingis, who has won three consecutive Australian Opens on slower courts, quickly beat heavy-hitting Mirjana Lucic 6-1, 6-2, and said the new, faster surface didn't worry her.

"You can hit the ball hard, you can hit a lot of winners, but it's almost impossible to do it all the way because you just have to be so concentrated, take the ball so early," Hingis said.

"It's just too hard to do once you have a player on the other side who can block it away, which I did today," she added.

No. 6 Barbara Schett downed American Meilen Tu 6-2, 6-7 (1), 6-4; No. 10 Conchita Martinez crushed Sandra Kleinova 6-1, 6-1; No. 12 Sandrine Testud beat Hungary's Petra Mandula 6-3, 4-6, 6-3; No. 13 Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario beat Julia Abe 6-2, 6-2, and No. 16 Elena Likhovtseva breezed past Bulgaria's Pavlina Nola 6-2, 6-2.