By Ila Ananya
Update: Serena Williams won the Australian Open 6-4, 6-4, to become the first player to win the Australian Open without dropping a set since Maria Sharapova did this in 2008. This is her 23rd Grand Slam win.
January 27th, 2017:
Venus Williams is back in a Grand Slam final in Australia for the first time in 8 years, after she won her Australian Open match against Coco Vandeweghe 6-7, 6-2, 6-3 on Thursday, 26th January. Ever since, everyone’s not only been talking about how she’s going to be facing her sister Serena Williams, in the final on Saturday morning, but also about her ecstatic twirls after her win yesterday.
The match lasted for 2 hours and 26 minutes. Soon after she realised she’d won, Venus tossed her racket and fell down to the court before she stood up and twirled happily around the court and yelled — what she described as “just joy”.
And when she went on to talk about sport, we could all see what her joy meant, “I think why people love sport so much is because you see everything in a line. In that moment, there’s no do-over. There’s no re-take. There’s no voice over. Its triumph and disaster witnessed in real time. This is why people live and die for sport, because you can’t fake it. You can’t. It’s either you do it or you don’t. People relate to the champion. They also relate to the person who didn’t win, because we all have those moments in our life,” she said.
Of course, a lot of us do know Serena and Venus as the faces of women’s tennis. And while Serena may have won six Australian Open titles (and is a final away from a record 23rd Grand Slam title), she says, “She’s [Venus Williams] my toughest opponent — nobody has ever beaten me as much as Venus has. I just feel like no matter what happens, we’ve won.”
Venus was diagnosed with Sjogren’s syndrome in 2011— an autoimmune disease that causes extreme fatigue, and can often result in organ and muscle damage — but that didn’t stop her from playing. “Everyone has their moment in the sun,” Venus Williams said, “Maybe mine has gone on a while. I’d like to keep that going. I’ve got nothing else to do so let’s keep it going.”