Serena Williams has been playing some of the best tennis of her career, but after making some comments to Rolling Stone about Maria Sharapova and the Steubenville football team rape case, all the talk about the tennis star has been focused off the court rather than on the grass at Wimbledon.
Williams enters the tournament as the clear favorite after losing just three times since the French Open last year and she also comes in as the champion at this year's French Open, where she defeated Sharapova for the championship. Williams said to reporters ahead of the start of the tournament on Monday that she spoke to Sharapova and apologized for getting her involved in her controversial story and also for making the comments in the first place.
In the aforementioned story, Williams spoke about the teenage victim in the rape case, seemingly blaming it on her for being too drunk and later she mentioned comments about a "top-five" player and said about how she talks in press conferences is boring and that she is seeing someone with a "black heart", which the reporter decided to speculate on, mentioning player Grigor Dimitrov, who Sharapova is reportedly dating and Williams once did.
Williams said she spoke to Sharapova in person to apologize about the incident and this all came after Sharapova responded the previous day with some quick hitting remarks about mentioning personal issues and relationships, bringing up Williams' in return. Williams has dominated Sharapova and has defeated her 13 times in a row, including the French Open finals. Sharapova defeated Williams at Wimbledon in 2004 and Williams said she would learn from the incident and to keep her personal life personal.
"She was inadvertently brought into the situation by assumptions made by the reporter," Williams said Sunday in London during her pre-Wimbledon news conference. "I personally talked to Maria at the player party, incidentally. I said, 'Look, I want to personally apologize to you if you are offended by being brought into my situation. I want to take this moment to just pour myself, be open, say I'm very sorry for this whole situation.' "
"At the end of the day, we have a tremendous amount of respect for what we do on the court. I just think she should be talking about her accomplishments, her achievements, rather than everything else that's just getting attention and controversy," Sharapova said.
"If she wants to talk about something personal, maybe she should talk about her relationship and her boyfriend that was married and is getting a divorce and has kids," Sharapova continued. "Talk about other things, but not draw attention to other things. She has so much in her life, many positives, and I think that's what it should be about."
