Serena: Coach upset me with advice to stop breastfeeding
Tennis star reveals comments made during battle to get back into form after birth of her daughter
SERENA WILLIAMS has said that her coach told her to stop breastfeeding to improve her tennis, adding the advice was “hard to take from a guy”.
The tennis champion revealed she chose to nurse her daughter for her first eight months – despite believing it was harming her return to peak physical form.
However, it became an issue between the player and Patrick Mouratoglou, her coach, who told her tennis would have to be “priority number one” if she wished to be successful.
The player said that when she arrived in France for the clay court training earlier this year, Mouratoglou told her she should stop breastfeeding for the sake of her performance.
“It’s absolutely hard to take from a guy,” Williams told Time magazine.
“He’s not a woman, he doesn’t understand that connection, that the best time of the day for me was when I tried to feed her. I’ve spent my whole life making everyone happy, just servicing it seems like everyone. And this is something I wanted to do.
“You have the power to sustain the life that God gave her. You have the power to make her happy, to calm her. At any other time in your life, you don’t have this magical superpower.”
The 23-times grand slam winner was defeated in the final at Wimbledon in July less than a year after giving birth to Alexis Olympia Ohanian, her daughter with Alexis Ohanian, a venture capitalist.
Williams dedicated her performance to “all the mums out there”, just 10 months after she suffered life-threatening complications following an emergency caesarean section.
However, she suffered the worst defeat of her grand slam career when Britain’s Johanna Konta beat her 6-1 6-0 in San Jose, California, last month.
In the wide-ranging interview, Williams, who has been vocal about her struggle to juggle being a hands-on mother alongside a return to tournaments, also addresses for the first time reports that her sister Yetunde Price’s killer has been released from prison.
Robert Maxfield, a gang member, killed Ms Price in a drive-by shooting in Compton, California, in 2003. Ms Price a mother-of-three, was just 31.
Maxfield was sentenced to 15 years for the shooting and was released on parole earlier this year.
“It was hard because all I think about is her kids,” Williams said.
“No matter what, my sister is not coming back for good behaviour.”
However, she said she was working towards learning to forgive her killer, saying: “The Bible talks about forgiveness. I would like to practise what I preach and teach Olympia that as well.”
Williams also spoke about her struggle to regain her figure after giving birth, saying she “fell victim” to social media pressure.
She revealed she used a waist trainer to make her stomach appear smaller when she posted a picture of her postpregnancy body on Instagram.
“I hated that I fell victim to that. It puts a lot of pressure on women,” she said. In 2016, she removed a picture from her Instagram page after 600 fans complained it had been digitally altered to make her waistline slimmer.
Williams quickly replaced the image, from a photo shoot with People magazine, with a near identical one, albeit with a slightly wider waist.