Serena Williams remains on course for her eighth Wimbledon title. It would be her first coup as a mother. In the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, press conferences with the Florida superstar are among the highlights. It’s also about Donald Trump or the World Cup – but often about her little daughter Alexis Olympia.
By Ulrike Weinrich from Wimbledon
A girl like Serena Williams can’t be taken to political black ice. After her smooth 6-2, 6-2, 6-2 draw in the Wimbledon round of 16 against the Russian qualifier Evgeniya Rodina, also one of the mothers in the circuit, the 36-year-old was asked about Donald Trump at the press conference. Of all things.
Serena Williams’ relationship with the President of the United States is – let us say it cautiously – not exactly described as the most intimate. So Trump will be on a state visit to England this coming weekend. And the 23-time Grand Slam winner expressed herself quite diplomatically about what she would think of a Trump side trip to the women’s final with American participation on Saturday noon.
“I don’t know what kind of comments he made about women in sport. If he wants to make it to the final, he has the right to do so,” said Williams, who was seeded in position 25, soberly and reservedly, and said with a view to the final: “I hope I will play there. But until then, I still have a lot of matches to win.”
If you take it exactly, it’s exactly two games. On Tuesday the Italian Camila Giorgi will be the next hurdle, who is the nominally worst remaining player in the main field as world ranking-52nd. Then this sentence, which Serena Williams said these days, will probably become topical again: “I am playing against rivals who show their strongest performance in a duel with me. So I have to be even better.”
That’s what it is. Serena, who sometimes talks about herself in the third person as the grown-ups do, sounds like: “That’s what makes me great!” Speaking of “great”. Serena has also discovered her love for the English football team these days, which cheers her on in her own way.
For example with tweets. “GOALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL LETS GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”, she twittered during the quarter-final of the “Three Lions” against Sweden (2-0) on Saturday. “There’s nothing else to do but support this team,” Williams said on Monday about the English team that will face Croatia in the semi-finals on Wednesday. The affection is not surprising: Serena is good friends with Meghan Markle, who recently married Prince Harry. Of course Williams was at the royal wedding in London. The Duchess of Sussex is expected to come to Church Road by the semi-final at the latest to keep their fingers crossed for her American compatriot on the spot.
The former industry leader is asked questions about her ten-month-old daughter Alexis Olympia in almost every PK in the windowless Main Interview Room, where even the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club logo is illuminated from the inside. Williams admitted in the first week of the tournament, during which she had also not lost a set, that she would feel guilty if she had to leave her offspring alone too long to play her matches.
It is quite possible that the sugar-sweet Alexis Olympia will have to do without her successful mum more often in the next few days.