VENUS WILLIAMS TAKES HER LOSS @ WIMBLEDON WITH THE GRACE & STYLE OF A TRUE CHAMPION

Written by: Staff on 28th June 2014

VENUS WILLIAMS TAKES HER LOSS @ WIMBLEDON WITH THE GRACE & STYLE OF A TRUE CHAMPION

epa04286228 Venus Williams of USA returns to Petra Kvitova of Czech Republic during their third round match of the Wimbledon Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, in London, Britain, 27 June 2014. EPA/VALDRIN XHEMAJ |

Focus – Venus Williams

By Cheryl Jones

The end of a third round match in the women’s competition at The Championships revealed a winner who was a former Wimbledon champ. Even though one of the contestants was Venus Williams who was the champion here five times, today a match delivered an outcome that she didn’t want. When the final ball was struck Venus had come out on the short end of the scoring in the match with Petra Kvitova who was the winner here in 2011.

The two women were evenly matched, but in the end, it was Kvitova who managed that final point to take the match away, 5-7, 7-6, 7-5. Even with the loss, Venus, the more optimistic of the sisters, made it sound as if it was a well placed stepping stone on her pathway to reconstructing her shaky standing in the women’s game. The final numbers tell only a portion of the story, but the match was engrossing tennis. There was nothing that could point to an error in Venus’ performance. She’s been around long enough to know that there’s always a winner and a loser. Tennis isn’t like soccer. There is never a tie. If you lose, you’re out. But, still she was disappointed.

Venus Williams

Venus has lately been working long and hard to overcome the effects of a nasty autoimmune disease called Sjögrens Syndrome. It caused her to miss an entire year of play. During her time away, she wasn’t just practicing tennis or lolling in bed until noon; she was tinkering with her diet and whatever else seemed tinker-able to alter the results that to most, must seem an inevitable outcome. Energy is a vital element in a professional athlete’s makeup. The disease saps all of that.

She has become a vegan and says that the low calorie and restrictive diet is working for her. When she hasn’t been prodding her body to cooperate, she has been working hard to see if it would be possible to perform as a successful professional tennis player again. It should be like riding a bike, according to speculation. She merely wants to keep astride the vehicle that has worked for her all these years. It is her vocation. She’s been at it for the last twenty years. She loves tennis. It’s her chosen career.

Eventually while she was working on her recovery and felt in control of all the intangible, but seriously unpredictable physical maladies, she decided to test the waters that would either validate or make it clear that her game couldn’t be retrieved from the void that the illness had left in her health and fitness. Fortunately, there was a sign. It was an early 2014 win at the Dubai Championships. It gave her some assurance, and a bit more confidence that she could still make an impact on the game that is surely tangled in her persona. She felt that the first two rounds in London was a validation of her hard work.

Today’s disappointing result seemed to call for a reevaluation. She says that she still has hope for a better outcome next time around. She is still in the Ladies Doubles with sister Serena. She won’t be headed home yet. There’s a shred of hope that her tennis involvement can carry her where she would like it.

Having won well over $30 million competing on the professional tour, she must be set for life in ways that most of us could never imagine. To her it is a given that she has been living with for quite some time. But she must believe in the old adage, “Make hay while the sun shines.” She’s got the bailer out and is searching for new pastures.

She works with her own successful design/interior decorating enterprise when she isn’t on the courts. V Starr Interiors is in Jupiter, Florida and she is an experienced designer of stage sets and other complicated venues. It isn’t a front that lets her play businesswoman, but it is a carefully thought out plan for her future. Even though tennis is considered the sport of a lifetime, it isn’t realistic to imagine it as a lifelong career.

In what could serve as a Plan C, she is the founder and operator of a fashion design firm called EleVen. She has a retailer who offers her personal take on appropriate tennis wear. Several of the tour competitors have worn her “line” on selected stages of the wonderful world of tennis. She wants to offer women the option of being able to “enjoy an active lifestyle while remaining fashionable.” Having recently been featured on CBS’s Sunday Morning, she seems well on her way to another successful undertaking.

After the match she appeared disappointed, but not morose. Sometimes questions involve other players. When she was asked about the career of Kimiko Date Krumm who has almost ten years on the thirty-four year old Williams, she wasn’t insulted. Evidently the commentary attributed to Krumm was in regard to keeping a strict diet. Krumm believes it has erased some of the problems that she associates with age.

Williams made light of that question though and said that she had missed chunks of her career because of injury. She went on to insist that she has kept regenerated because she has to make up for lost time. Unfortunately, time waits for no one according to a plethora of adages. The kicker with Venus is the autoimmune disease. It is an unpredictable stalker. It hasn’t been an issue during her time in London, or so it seems, but having the health problems in the mix can’t be easy to cope with.

Venus Williams

Questions at after-match interviews may often seem inane. Today, she was asked if she had played a little better, could she have won? All I have to say for that one is, Well, duh? She was polite, and much more circumspect though, as she said, “I don’t think I was bad today, so I would have liked to have won. The only thing I can do is learn from it and continue to improve.”

Venus Williams is a woman with a real game plan (actually several) that will undoubtedly take her far beyond the grass courts that she was forced to vacate today, at least in the singles arena. Her reality even has “game”.

Topics: Petra Kvitova, sports news, Tennis, Venus Williams, Wimbledon

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10sBalls_com says:

June 28, 2014 at 10:54 am

VENUS WILLIAMS TAKES HER LOSS @ WIMBLEDON WITH THE GRACE & STYLE OF A TRUE CHAMPION – http://t.co/FNMd7G2UKg @Venuseswilliams #Wimbledon