If Venus Williams had the full attention of the locals on the middle Saturday of the Australian Open, it was only because her opponent was ‘a little Aussie battler’.
That’s Australian for ‘a member of tennis’s lumpen proletariat hoping to catch a seed on an off day’, in this case a wild card ranked 980 in the world who has been known to shop for her match-day tank-tops at Target, the cheap and cheerful chain store.
If it had not been for Casey Dellacqua, and it’s not often that you say that, Venus would have continued to be the Forgotten Sister of Melbourne Park.
At the All England Club, they come as a pair, Venus and Serena, the two African-American sisters who contest all-Williams Wimbledon finals.
Things are a little different on the other side of the tennis world. There has been much discussion during this Australian Open about Serena’s form, mood and jewellery, and that is warranted, since she has won this tournament four times, including last year, and she arrived here both at the top of the ranking list and at the top of the referee’s watch-list, after her behaviour at the US Open four months ago when she told a lineswoman she wanted to stuff a ball down her throat.
In Australia, Serena is always under the arc-lights, even when there isn’t ‘a little Aussie battler’ on the other side of the net. Venus, though, has not had the same Hollywood treatment.
Until Saturday, until Dellacqua popped up on the same court, Venus had been left to go quietly about her business during this slam, since the Australian tennis public no longer consider her to be a contender.
Though Venus is a former finalist in Melbourne, it is now seven years since she played Serena for the title, and since 2003 she has appeared in just one more quarter-final.
In that same period, Venus has won three of her five Wimbledon trophies. Last summer, she was the runner-up at Wimbledon to Serena. Put Venus Ebony Starr Williams on the Wimbledon greensward, and she suddenly has the killer mind of a CIA operative; put her on a hard court by the River Yarra and she isn’t quite the same. Hence why she appears to be regarded here as a second-rate sister; not that she appears to care about her profile.
“I don’t think about the headlines. My whole life has been a headline, and I’ve never in my career aimed to get headlines. I aim to win matches,” she said. “That’s pretty much my aim here: to win matches.”
Venus, who was wearing a slit canary-yellow dress from her own ‘Eleven’ clothing range, took a while to finish off the girl who shops at Target. A tiebreak was needed to settle the second set on the Rod Laver Arena. The American, once the alpha female of tennis and now the world No 6, won 6-1, 7-6, setting up a fourth-round match with Italy’s Francesca Schiavone.
All Venus has to do is defeat the No 17 seed, and she will be into the quarter-finals of the Australian Open for only the second time in seven years.
It would be a foolish game to start suggesting that Venus has no chance of winning this tournament.
Venus turns 30 in June, so approaching what Monica Seles memorably called the ‘dirty thirties’ for female tennis professionals, but she doesn’t consider herself to be an atrophying, past-it player. She doesn’t feel old; she is pleased to say that she doesn’t have any wrinkles, and feels as though “there is so much left in my strings to accomplish”, so many more slams to possibly win.
Indeed, even if Venus lost on Monday, and also in the first round of every tournament she plays before Wimbledon, you would still include her in a group of possible champions on the lawns of south-west London. But maybe there is more life left in Venus’s racket than more Wimbledon wins.
If Venus won this Australian Open, it would end all suggestions that she is a ‘one grand slam a year’ woman who is only dangerous on grand slams that are played on grass in south-west London.
Last season, Venus lost in the second round of the Australian Open to Carla Suarez Navarro, from the Canary Islands. On Saturday, Suarez Navarro played another member of the Williams family, with Serena beating her 6-0, 6-3, though the American did say the match had contained “the toughest 6-0 set” she had ever won. So far, Serena has dropped just nine games all tournament, and few are expecting her to lose her next match to Sam Stosur, an Australian.
The last time Serena and Stosur shared a court together was on the day before the tournament, at the Haiti benefit that Roger Federer organised, and the Australian appeared to be nervous during the doubles exhibition, flunking more shots than anyone else.
One evening during the first week, Serena met Prince William in one of the corridors below the Rod Laver Arena, and they posed for a picture: “It was super cool. Prince William was really dapper and suave. I told him that I might like his little brother better because he’s the little brother, and he laughed and said he might like Venus better because she’s older.”
Venus didn’t get the chance to meet the prince.
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