Australian Open: Serena Williams blazes through opening round
Love-and-three. Nice work, old girl. Onto more important matters. Harry and Meghan. Thoughts?
Love-and-three. Nice work, old girl. Onto more important matters. Harry and Meghan. Thoughts? “I have absolutely no comments on anything with that,” says Serena Williams. “But good try. You tried. You did good.”
Gotcha. We’ll move on. Margaret Court’s record. Millstone around one’s neck?
“It has factored a lot into my game,” she says. “Now it’s just more or less about doing the best that Serena Williams can do. Margaret Court was a wonderful, great champion. And now, how great is Serena Williams?”
Is this a rhetorical question? Are we meant to answer? No? OK.
“That’s kind of what I have been thinking about the last couple of weeks and months,” she says of focusing on her own accomplishments instead of obsessing about Court’s record. “It definitely helps me relax a lot.”
One more thing about royalty. Dusty Martin. What’s the story there?
“It was just by chance we met in the Maldives,” Williams says of a friendship with the AFL star so unlikely as to be nearly unfathomable. “He just happened to be there. We just hung out. We had a blast. We decided he couldn’t come to the Australian Open because he would be mobbed way too much. So it was, like, if we could hang out, it would be cool. But definitely not in Melbourne Park. It would be way too crazy for him. That’s why we were, like, not here. He can’t do everyday things like that. He’s way too recognisable. I think everyone would go nuts if they saw him.
“He’s so good at his job it’s insane. It’s cool to get to know other athletes that are so good at their craft, just get to talk to them and see what makes them so good.”
And that was the end of another Williams press conference, the most bizarre post-match press conference of all, the only press conference at the Australian Open that could possibly feature Harry, Meghan, who used to attend her matches, Margaret Court and Martin. It sounded like the start of a good gag. Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, Margaret Court and Dusty Martin walked into a bar ...
Williams demolished Anastasia Potapova 6-0 6-3 on Monday in two quick sets of American hustle that was a screaming match as much as a tennis match. The decibels were Sharapova-eqsue. Williams was at her grim-faced, full-throated, foot-stomping, big-hitting best. Coming off her victory in Auckland, she continued her most authoritative start to a year in yonks.
“Played really strong in the first set. Just building on that,” she said. “I feel like I can still improve and get better throughout this tournament. This is a good stepping stone for right now.”
Back in the days before Williams started losing the plot in the finals of majors, the star-spangled days before Court’s benchmark made her try too damn hard to become the most successful tennis player in history, and perhaps the greatest female athlete the world has ever seen, she summed up her ability to crush pressure situations by saying, “Well, I’ve played a lot of tennis.”
How much tennis might she have left to play? Well, not very much at all, according to ESPN commentator Mary Joe Fernandez, who claimed the 38-year-old might retire on the spot if she overtook Court’s 24 majors.
Asked who she thought would leave the sport first out of Williams and the 38-year-old Roger Federer, Fernandez said: “I think if Serena breaks the record, these next two majors, she might retire earlier. She has come with a mission: to win 25 majors.”
How much tennis has Williams actually played? Well, more than a lot: 974 singles matches for 832 wins over 23 years. She used to played so much winning tennis that it became a habit to get the job done in major finals, especially during the purple patch of 2012 to 2017, when she won 10 of 19 slams to move within one more of Court’s historic tally.
She became a mother in 2017 and missed four consecutive slams. Since her return, she’s lost two finals of the US Open and two at Wimbledon, all of them winnable, all of them opportunities blown to get to 25. And perhaps get out of here.
Williams suffered blood clots in the lungs after giving birth to her two-year-old daughter Olympia, which she said made her anxious when it came to the issue of smoke haze and breathing difficulties at the Australian Open. Cool and wet weather at Melbourne Park on Monday made the issue a non-issue.
“It definitely crossed my mind,” she said of her health issues. “I’m, like, ‘Oh, no, I’m already playing a little down than most people.’ I think it changes every day.
“There’s a lot of factors on how it can change. That is still a concern for, I think, pretty much everyone. Every day all the players and the tournament make sure that all the players are updated on what the play conditions would be like.
“Every single day we get updates. Today it seemed normal. It seemed pretty good. I think the air quality was pretty good. It definitely felt like that. But I definitely was concerned, and am.”
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