adminSERENA Williams became depressed after her failure to win the US Open this summer and has been battling a similar knee condition to that suffered by Rafael Nadal. The extent of her disappointment and physical difficulties after missing out on the calendar Grand Slam was revealed on Tuesday by her French coach and mentor Patrick Mouratoglou.
Williams has been criticised for not playing in last week’s WTA Finals in Singapore, but Mouratoglou, who has masterminded her late career surge, insisted that she had no option. Such was her distress at falling to Roberta Vinci in the Flushing Meadows semi-finals that the two of them did not communicate for more than a fortnight afterwards as she shut herself away.
However, he does not believe there will be a hangover into next season because she has already suffered a ‘strong reaction’ to the setback, which should be out of her system by January. ‘She was depressed, because she didn’t reach her goal,’ he said. ‘The disappointment is as high as the expectations. But she’s always like that. When she loses, she’s very affected. ‘
Mouratoglou, speaking in his capacity as an ambassador for Maui Jim sunglasses, hinted that his relationship with Williams is strictly professional these days, saying ‘It was 15 days before we spoke. She doesn’t want to talk when she’s depressed. But it’s better because I’m representing tennis, and after something like this, you have to see people who don’t represent tennis. I didn’t force it. I know her and I understand also that she needs a break. It’s fine.
‘She has had a complete break that she needed, she had to pull out of a few tournaments this year and she hates to do that but we had to, especially her knees needed rest.
‘The injury can get really worse, and at her age her career could really be in danger if she went too far and got more injured like Rafa did, for example, in the past.
He kept on playing with the same problem and then it got worse and he had to stop for almost a year, we don’t want this to happen. She is 34, if she has to stop for a year then it is really bad for her future.
‘It’s the same as Rafa. It’s just playing for so many years, the cartilage is a problem. Not all of it, but a big part so the bones just hit themselves. If you keep on playing with this for too long, too much, the next step is a stress fracture and then it’s really bad.’
Mouratoglou also revealed that Williams feared the worst on the day she lost to Vinci in the US semi-finals: ‘That was the first thing she said when she came to the court: ‘my knees hurt so much today’, so she was struggling for moving.
‘When she went out of the car to the US Open, the first sentence she told me was this one. So she was really struggling to move. And I think also the tension went to another level, which I expected, because the closer you get to a final goal, obviously the stress goes to another level and I take my responsibility on that because I couldn’t find a way to make her handle it better.
‘I think she did incredibly well the whole tournament because she found a way, especially the match against Venus, because Venus pushed her to play really her best and the level of the match was amazing. So I was impressed by the way she was handling it and maybe that’s one of the reasons I thought it would be OK.’
He added that she was always likely to need a three month break during this period to help her recover, and that he is confident she will be ready for Australia in January. ‘I don’t think there will be a delayed reaction because the reaction already happened.
She came back to practice this week and I feel that she’s already motivated for the new season and that she is ready too early actually, so I told her to calm down, because it’s too early, to go for practice at 100 percent.’ Williams will play in the International Tennis Premier League in Asia at the end of this month before turning her attention to Australia. – DAILYMAIL
Online Reporter