Serena serves warning shot to Mcenroe for women jibe
As tennis star poses naked showing off her pregnancy, she tells ‘Dear John’ to keep her out of his row
IT HAS been debated before: where would a great female tennis player such as Serena Williams rank against the men on the international circuit?
John Mcenroe, the former threetimes Wimbledon champion and now a tennis pundit, disparagingly put her as low as 700th in the world. “If she had to just play the men’s circuit, it would be an entirely different story,” he said.
However, Williams was not letting that go. Faster than you can say “You cannot be serious” she went to Twitter to deliver a curt return of serve.
“Dear John,” she wrote. “I adore and respect you but please please keep me out of your statements that are not factually based. I’ve never played anyone ranked ‘there’ nor do I have time. Respect me and my privacy as I’m trying to have a baby. Good day sir.”
The row began after Mcenroe was asked during an interview promoting his new memoirs where he would rank Williams, who is one Grand Slam singles title short of Margaret Court’s record of 24.
“If she played the men’s circuit she’d be like 700 in the world,” he said, adding: “That doesn’t mean I don’t think Serena is an incredible player, and I suppose anything’s possible; maybe at some point a women’s tennis player can be better than anybody. I just haven’t seen that in any other sport, and I haven’t seen it in tennis.”
A rather chastened Mcenroe later went on US television to say he had not meant to cause any offence and went on to admit that it was a ridiculous comparison, one made all the more pointless as it is only in tennis that such a question is ever posed.
Nevertheless, it is probably safe to say that there will be no invite for Mcenroe to Williams’s forthcoming baby shower.
Williams – who is six months’ pregnant with her first child with fiancé Alexis Ohanian – has said her “heart dropped” when she learned she was expecting. Her first thought was: “‘Oh my God, this can’t be … I had planned on winning Wimbledon this year”.
Williams said she had only taken a pregnancy test on the insistence of a friend and did not truly believe the result until she had taken six.
In an interview with Vanity Fair US, Williams said she delivered the news to Mr Ohanian, an internet entrepreneur, after asking him to fly from San Francisco to Melbourne, where she was about to play the Australian Open, and handing him a bag with the tests in.
Williams has now posed for the magazine’s cover to celebrate her pregnancy, covering her breasts with her hands in a near-nude shoot by the photographer Annie Leibovitz.
She said she had first started feeling different a week before the Australian Open, when her friend, Jessica Steindorff, bought her a pregnancy test.
Williams said she replied: “I’ll take it just because (a) to prove you wrong and (b) because it’s fun, whatever. It’s like a joke. Why not?”
After seeing the results, she “did a double take and my heart dropped. Like literally it dropped. [She thought] ‘Oh my God, this can’t be. I’ve got to play a tournament. How am I going to play the Australian Open?’ I had planned on winning Wimbledon this year.” The August issue of Vanity Fair is available in the UK on July 7.
‘I’ve never played anyone ranked ‘there’ nor do I have time. Respect me and my privacy as I’m trying to have a baby’