LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- It has been a year of new experiences for everybody, many of them different, many of them things we never imagined, in a new COVID-19 altered landscape.
It’s true for us regular people, and it’s true for Serena Williams. The most visible female athlete in the world is more than ready to end her COVID slowdown in, of all places, central Kentucky, in this week’s inaugural Top Seed Open presented by Bluegrass Orthopaedics, to be played in Nicholasille, Ky.
Williams, ranked No. 9 in the world, has won 23 Grand Slam events and played all over the world, but she has never played in Kentucky. She’ll be the top seed in the event, playing her first competitive matches since helping the U.S. to a win in the Fed Cup in February.
"I never expected to be playing here in Kentucky, but it's close to Florida and easy to get here for me, and I'm excited," Williams told reporters on a Saturday Zoom call. “There won't be fans here ... but it's cool. We've been stuck at home for six months and I've never been home for that long since I was a teenager. Even when I was pregnant, I was traveling a lot to so many different places, so it's been a long time since I've been home that long. [That] was nice, but it's also a really cool opportunity to come to Kentucky."
Williams has had to take breaks before. She has had injuries. She has taken time off for pregnancy. But she relates what many of us have experienced – being forced to the sidelines by something like the coronavirus is a different type of down-time altogether.
There are mental challenges, as well as physical, and she has noted the difference.
“The biggest difference is that it wasn't just from me being injured. Everyone just had to take a break and a pause, so it will be really fun and interesting to see how we play," she said. “Everyone has the opportunity to be more fit now, because we spent so much time at home ... to just work on yourself, your life and your game. Match fitness is always different than 'fit' fitness.”
Williams has been working out in her own “bubble,” in her home of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. But it has been a challenge to craft the same kind of physical and tennis regimen that she might have during non-COVID times.
“My physios are in Europe, so I had to figure out a way for someone to work with me in my bubble, in Florida, that I could trust,” Williams said. “That was a new curve that I had to deal with. Tennis is naturally a socially-distanced sport, so it was kind of easy to go back and just walk on my side of the court and have my hitter walk on his side of the court.”
The tournament will be a tune-up event for a couple of larger events to come, the Western and Southern Open, which has been moved to New York, and the U.S. Open, which begins on August 31 without fans. The French Open has been pushed back to September.
The field in Lexington begins main draw play on Monday, with her older sister, Venus Williams, as well as 2017 U.S. Open champion Sloane Stephens, as prime challengers, along with the world’s former No. 1 player Victoria Azarenka, and 16-year-old American star Coco Gauff.
Strange times, but also new opportunities, are the theme for Serena entering the tournament.
"I've played through so many generations and so many different things, and I honestly feel cool to be able to play through this era and say, 'I remember when it first happened,'" she said. “That's how I'm trying to look at it, because it's something that the whole world is going through, not just us as tennis players or us as athletes. The whole world is going through this pandemic, and right now, I think that sport is one of the few things that can almost provide a good breath of fresh air or a sigh of relief to people that are really still stuck in their homes."
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