Venus and Serena Williams are America’s top female tennis players. However, both sisters have been slowed down by devastating injuries over the past two years. At Wimbledon, we watched them bravely limp around as they both, even today, continue to experience the effects of their absence from the courts.
Serena has seemingly recovered from internal and personal medical conditions that have been well documented, and there is really no need to mention what she went through, though it appears that everyone in the world has no intention of leaving it alone. It came up at her media conference, as both sisters had the look of tennis elegance, designing and wearing their own on-court outfits.
And it didn’t hurt that both won their opening matches and advanced to the second round of the U.S. Open at Flushing Meadow Park inside Arthur Ashe Stadium. Venus had the tougher opening match, but she came through just fine.
On Tuesday night, we left stadium after the midnight hour due to a three-hour men’s match between Rafael Nadal and Andrey Golubev, who refused to quit as Nadal finally pulled out the win, 6-3, 7-6 and 7-5.
The length of the match caused quite a bit of controversy, as USTA officials had scheduled a number of the women’s matches to be played on center court after the men play.
Serena was really ticked off, as her match didn’t start until after 10 p.m. In response, she took it out on her opponent, Bojana Jovanovski, beating her 6-1, 6-1, as one fan within earshot of my seat yelled out, “This is child abuse!”
Serena went on to say about the women playing after the men late into the night, “The guys should play second.” She continued her mini-rage at the post-match media conference. “We’re ladies. They [the men] should totally play second all the time. The men should go second. It’s ridiculous,” she groaned.
Venus admitted to being nervous before her match, but she advanced to the second round as well. James Blake also advanced.