Williams keeps silent on coaching questions
SERENA WILLIAMS won her first competitive match since the US Open final, that infamous night in New York when she received three code violations, and then made it clear that any discussion of the biggest tennis story of 2018 was completely off the table.
In the immediate aftermath of Williams’s extraordinary loss to Naomi Osaka, she insisted that she saw her row with the chair umpire Carlos Ramos in gender terms.
“I’m here fighting for women’s rights and equality and for all kinds of stuff,” she said. “For me to say ‘thief’ and for him to take a game, it made me feel like it was a sexist remark.”
Debate
Coming less than a year after the launch of the #MeToo movement, Williams’s comments sparked a huge, ongoing debate about sexism in tennis.
But she has declined to return to the issue in any depth and when she was asked yesterday about her position on coaching from the sidelines – the offence that sparked her initial code violation – she replied curtly: “I, like, literally have no comment.”
Having overcome Germany’s Tatjana Maria by a 6-0, 6-2 scoreline in just 49 minutes at the Australian Open, Williams was keener to talk about her latest radical costume: a green jumpsuit that she referred to as a “Serena-tard”.
“I wanted to be fit,” said Williams. “I came back. Nike always wants to make an incredibly strong, powerful statement for mums that are trying to get back and get fit. That was basically it for me.”
Meanwhile, Serena’s older sister Venus had to work harder for her 6-7 (7-3), 7-6 (7-3), 6-2 win over Romanian Mihaela Buzarnescu.
Former champion Victoria Azarenka was emotional after losing her first-round match to Germany’s Laura Siegemund 6-7, 6-4, 6-2.
“I’ve been through a lot of things in my life and sometimes I wonder why I go through them,” said Azarenka, of Belarus, in a tearful press conference, “but I think they’re going to make me stronger. I want to believe that and I’m going to work hard for it.
“Sometimes I just need a little time and patience and a little support. I don’t think, sitting here today, that I failed.
“But I’m struggling. Failing is when you give up and you don’t try again.”
Both the game’s world No 1s progressed, Novak Djokovic in comfortable style against qualifier Mitchell Krueger, while Simona Halep had to fight back from dropping the first set against Kaia Kanepi, the powerful Estonian who beat her in the first round of last year’s US Open.
But Australia’s Nick Kyrgios was an early faller, succumbing in straight sets to the lethal serving of 16th seed Canadian Milos Raonic. (© Daily Telegraph, London)
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