Serena is so good, it’s hard for her to believe
Top seed says she felt ‘off ’ in easy victory over Petkovic
TORONTO • Top-seed Serena Williams is her own harshest critic.
“I still think I have a tremendous amount of improvement to do off the ground and everywhere else,” Williams said. This was after a dominant 6-3, 6-2 win over the No.16 seed Andrea Petkovic, which featured 28 winners from the world No. 1 at Toronto’s Rogers Cup on Thursday evening.
The match, which lasted just over an hour on Centre Court at the Aviva Centre, was seemingly much smoother than her second-round opener, where she didn’t hold serve the entire first set.
Williams said she thought she served better on Thursday, but felt she was too negative on court.
“I just felt off, you know. Just got to be more positive out there again.”
However, when the media relayed some of her statistics at the post-match news conference — nine aces, zero break points faced — Williams conceded the numbers sounded good.
“My coach is right? He said I played good. So maybe it’s just me. I just — I just didn’t feel it … Clearly, you know, statistics speak.”
There to watch Williams advance to the quarter-finals under the lights was Toronto’s own Drake and a host of Blue Jays players, including Troy Tulowitzki, who was there to participate in the coin toss for serve to open the match.
Next up for Williams in her quarter-final on Friday is Roberta Vinci to whom Williams has never lost. On Wednesday night, at the men’s event in Montreal, Australian player Nick Kyrgios was caught by a courtside microphone saying to his opponent Stan Wawrinka that Australia’s Thanasi Kokkinakis “banged your girlfriend, sorry to tell you about that” during their secondround match.
Kyrgios was fined US$10,000 by the ATP for the incident. The 20-year-old player issued a public apology on his Facebook page along with privately apologizing to Wawrinka.
Following her third-round loss to Sara Errani at the Rogers Cup on Thursday, Victoria Azarenka was asked about the issue.
“Are you ready to hear a long answer for that?” she said.
“I think there is no excuse for any type of behaviour like that on the tennis court.
“But I think the tough part and an issue here comes from education from the parents. And I’m not saying there is good or bad parents in any case. I’m just talking in general. I think when you are young and you have so much pressure on you and you are making a lot of money at this young age, it’s difficult for your parents to be a parent to you and restrict you from a lot of things. So it’s very easy to get out of control and lose the sight of reality. And I think that’s what happens to a lot of athletes in a lot of sports. So I think the issue in that is a little bit bigger, from what happened yesterday,” she said.
“Personally, I think it was really bad … for our sport, and hopefully he can learn and just, you know, really understand what’s going on around him, because everybody makes mistakes, but there is a limit to things. But my personal opinion that it comes a little bit from how you are raised as well.”