Agencies
PERTH, January 5
There isn’t much that Serena Williams hasn’t done on a tennis court.
And she added to her bow at the Hopman Cup in Perth on Monday morning when she ordered an espresso coffee midway through her match.
She had to try something.
The world number 1 had lost the first set against Italian world number 12 Flavia pennetta 6-0.
Williams was in uncharted waters.She had hit just four winners, but 12 unforced errors and won only 11 points for the set – just seven on her own serve.
Pennetta claimed the set in 19 minutes.
The hit of coffee helped, eventually. The winner of 18 grand slam titles fell behind 1-2 against the serve in the second set, but then lost only one more game for the match, winning 0-6 6-3 6-0.
“I am a coffee drinker and I didn’t have mine this morning and I was just feeling it,” she said.
“So I had to get some coffee in me. I told them to just give me a shot of espresso. I asked them if it was legal; ‘is it illegal to have a shot of espresso?’ because I never did it before.”
“I needed some espresso. I needed to wake up – the jetlag gets you all the time.”
Pennetta started to struggle with her first serve in the second set and Williams was able to pounce; she also raised her count of winners to 15.
And as her game returned, so did her smile – something she says people should get to expect in 2015.
“I have never smiled so much in a match before,” she said.
“This year my whole goal is just to have more fun. My dad says ‘Serena, you have done anything; just enjoy yourself, I promise you will play better’. So I said ‘Ok, I am trying to relax a bit more and play how I know I can play’.”
Williams had every reason to be a bit lethargic.
She arrived into Perth for the mixed teams’ event, where she is partnering John Isner, on Saturday and played her first match at 10am (Perth time) on Monday morning.
Plus, the roof of the Perth Arena had to be closed because the outside temperature had already hit 40 degrees by the time Williams and Pennetta had finished their match.
It’s the reason most of the players arrive into Australia early in January; to condition themselves for the first grand slam tournament of the year – the Australian Open that starts in Melbourne on January 19.
