Serena Williams had a tense look on her face throughout her fraught quarterfinal victory over her sister Venus — a look only occasionally punctuated by an emotional scream as she exerted herself on a ripping backhand. The tennis great — in the thick of her historical pursuit of the calendar Grand Slam — wore the same tense face at the press conference afterward. The press event that was also punctuated by a ripping backhand from Williams. When a reporter asked the exhausted Williams why she wasn’t smiling, Serena fired the equivalent of a two-hander.
“Normally you smile when you win… what’s wrong?” asked a tone deaf reporter (albeit one who was simply trying to do a hard job) Williams replied:
To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t want to be here. I just want to be in bed right now. I have to wake up early to practice. I don’t want to answer any of these questions and you keep asking me the same questions…You’re not making it super enjoyable… I’m just being honest.”
Williams graciously stayed another few minutes as media asked her a few more times what’s it like to play your sister? and how do you feel about going after the Grand Slam?