Tears flow after Venus power show
VENUS Williams was like a hunter under the rolling clouds of No 1 Court. She let out shrieks of primeval aggression and thudded the ball so venomously that lesser mortals might have hidden behind the net.
It may have been the imagination playing tricks, but there genuinely seemed to be an extra frisson about the older of tennis’s most famous sisters, a sort born of briefly fleeing life’s harder realities.
That place she has inhabited for the last few days has centred on a road accident in Florida. She has been blamed in a police report for causing the death at traffic lights of 78-year-old Jerome Barson, a passenger in a car driven by his wife Linda.
The victim’s family have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Williams, alleging negligence. They list Mr Barson’s injuries as ‘severed main arteries, massive internal bleeding, a fractured spine and massive internal organ damage.’
Apologies for recounting the medical horrors in some gory detail. Nobody comes to the strawberries-and- cream end of the newspaper to be assaulted by such facts.
The All England Club at its best is about escapism. It was for Williams, until the last ball was struck.
And then, after her highoctane win over Belgium’s impressive No 1 Elise Mertens, came the tears. The five-time Wimbledon champion had hit questions that skirted around the problems at the six-lane intersection with a couple of verbal passing shots when she finally crumpled.
‘There are really no words to describe, like, how devastating and — yeah. I’m completely speechless,’ she just about said.
Usually when a sportsman or woman says he or she is speechless, it is in the middle of an adrenaline-fuelled torrent of words after a mighty victory. But here Williams clammed up, her white visor hiding her red eyes from the world.
Those pictures, carried from the press conference room into evening TV news bulletins from Wimbledon to Sacramento, then showed her popping outside for a bit of blotting with the help of loo roll one of her entourage was carrying around in her bag.
Venus then briefly returned to the room — credit to her for that — for a few more questions. Nobody had the heart for any more George Carman stuff and the questions were confined to tennis.
Williams was given a good test by Mertens and emerged with fine grades. Those who are suggesting she can win the title for a sixth time will not have been prompted to reassess.
If she fulfils that prophecy she will become the second oldest winner of the Venus Rosewater Dish, eclipsed only by Charlotte Cooper Sterry, an Englishwoman of 37 years and 282 days that afternoon in 1908. Venus is a slip of a girl at 37 last month.
Mertens started nervously on her Wimbledon debut but stepped up to take the first set into a tiebreak, which Williams won 9-7. The American, interrupted by fleeting rainfall, ended up taking the second set 6-4.
The only other ladies’ champion in the draw had her own emotional story to tell and one of the bravest and most uplifting of all.
Petra Kvitova, winner here in 2011 and 2014, was playing only her third tournament since she confronted a knifewielding intruder at her Czech apartment last December.
The injuries to her hands were career-threatening. But thanks to her own tenacity and the work of surgeon Radek Kebrle, here she was.
Dr Kebrle was watching from Kvitova’s box as his star patient beat world No 53 Johanna Larsson 6-3, 6-4.
‘It was more about passion than nerves,’ said Kvitova. ‘It was beautiful to be back.’