A new Serena Williams makes Bay Area appearance
In exclusive interview, she speaks about enormous changes in her life; will play Tuesday in Bay Area
Serena Williams returns to the Bay Area this week as a vastly different person than the one we’ve seen for 20-plus years. In the past 10 months, she has become a mom, wife and crowd favorite for something other than her Hall of Fame tennis game.
Williams, 36, seems to be a more sympathetic figure. Although she still can impose her will on the court, motherhood has changed and softened her image, at least in the public’s eye.
“I’ve always been very soft personally,” Williams said Friday in an exclusive interview. “A lot of people, unfortunately, never get to see that side of me because they always see me pumping my fist when I’m on the court.
“Now they can see the other side that has always been there.”
Williams, fresh off a runner-up finish at Wimbledon last month, is scheduled to open Tuesday night at the Mubudala Silicon Valley Classic in San Jose.
Williams won the tournament three times (2011, 2012, 2014) when it was known as Bank of the West Classic and played at Stanford. With its new name and new sponsor comes a new venue: The newly rebuilt San Jose State Tennis Complex. (1240 S. 7th Street, near Spartan Stadium.)
This is the first tournament for Williams since Wimbledon — just her fifth of the season — and she has one more tuneup on hard courts before the U.S. Open next month, where she will try to match Margaret Court’s record of 24 Grand Slam titles.
Last year was a big year for Williams off the court. She married Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, the San Francisco-based social media website. They had a child, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr., born in September.
During her pregnancy, Williams wondered how her new life would impact her game.
“One thing I was concerned about, will I have the same desire?” she said.
The answer: “I definitely feel like I do. I can’t say it’s
more. My desire was at a point where I don’t think it can go higher.”
She is not the same woman, that’s certain. Just as Olympic beach volleyball star Kerri Walsh Jennings said motherhood allowed her to develop as a person and a woman and provided her fresh motivation, Williams feels different because of her daughter.
“She is now my priority as opposed to tennis, which is a good feeling. Tennis is my priority for life. But Olympia, family and God come way before that,” Williams said. “It’s really given me a balance to life.”
It also created physical challenges she’d never before faced. Williams’ Caesarean section delivery was followed by complications, including a pulmonary embolism that left her barely able to walk to the front door of her Florida home when she finally returned from the hospital.
At the French Open in May, Williams injured a pectoral muscle and was forced to withdraw, further stalling her comeback.
Mary Joe Fernandez, an ESPN analyst whose playing career included three Grand Slam finals and a world No. 4 ranking, said the impact of Williams’ health issues shouldn’t be given short shrift.
“I fall into this too, because she’s Serena. You think she’s going to win every match,” Fernandez said.
The winner off 72 professional titles and more than $86 million in career prize money, Williams arrived at Wimbledon in June seeded at No. 25 and ranked 181st in the world.
Sam Farmer, who covered Wimbledon for the Los Angeles Times, watched as the two weeks unfolded and drew a parallel to the comeback golfer Tiger Woods is
trying to make, albeit under vastly different circumstances.
“He revolutionized the game and sort of collected detractors along the way. He was so dominant you kind of rooted for the other guys,” Farmer said of Woods. “Then he dropped off the edge and then he came back to the point where he was leading on a Sunday in a major.”
Just as Woods came up short at the British Open, Williams lost 6-3, 6-3 to Angelique
Kerber in the Wimbledon final. She laughed at the notion that she had been favored to beat Kerber, viewing her defeat in the final as “a massive triumph.”
The crowd at Centre Court seemed to share that sentiment, roaring their approval as Williams raised the second-place trophy over her head.
“It was an amazing moment,” Williams said.
“People are definitely rooting for her,” said Fernandez, who was part of the Wimbledon coverage crew for ESPN.
“This is a new chapter for Serena, and she is not only sort of a sympathetic character but a heroic character for a lot of people,” Farmer said. “Doing what she’s done at her age, there’s almost a nostalgic appreciation.”
Williams is thrilled to make this all about others, starting with her daughter.
“Six weeks ago I was still breastfeeding,” she said. “For me, it was just a feat for women. We can do everything. ‘You can’t do this and have a baby.’ I take the ‘can’t’ off that.
“Every moment I play in the future, it’s definitely for everyone, women in particular, but also men who are going through things. Just inspiration. If you need a pickup, I am just like everyone else and I feel like if I can do it others can do it.”
Make no mistake, this will not become the Serena Williams Tour of Hope.
She intends to keep winning, and winning big.
“Second place and second-best is not good enough,” Williams said. “Wins are great, losses are hard but they prepare you to get more wins. It’s all on the right path to getting to my goal.”
San Jose is the next stop on the path, the start of a journey that will take her to New York and the U.S. Open, a tournament Williams has captured six times.
“It would not surprise me if she won the U.S. Open,” Fernandez said, “but it’s not going to be a piece of cake.”
Williams isn’t predicting victory. But she likes where her comeback stands.
“For me, it’s just the beginning. I’m nowhere near where I need to be and nowhere near where I was was,” she said. “I have a long way to go, but I don’t have any doubts about whether I’m going to get there.”
Tickets for the Silicon Valley Classic are available at www.MubadalaSVC.com or by calling 866-982-8497. The tournament runs Monday through Aug. 5.