Black Tennis Pros

Looks like American Venus Williams has accepted the fact that baby sister Serena is all grown up, and when they hit the courts, she's treating her as such. Venus didn't pull her younger sibling to her to give her a noogie, but she did give her a goose egg.



In the Khalifa Stadium in Doha, Qatar at the Sony Ericsson Championships, Venus took Serena to task to the tune of a 5-7, 6-1, 6-0 defeat. The Williams-Williams match was the 18th time that the sisters have met.

After being down one set, Venus turned her attention to the second set and improved her game. For a moment it appeared that Serena would continue to prevail, but not so.

Venus said, "I think I started playing well in the second set, serving a lot better, and then that first game in the third was really long. But after that, I think she started to get a little more impatient, a little more upset with her performance. She just started to play faster and faster; when the other person keeps bringing it back, it just starts a domino effect with her."

Ever the big sister, Venus said of Serena, "There's nothing I can do. I think she just has to go through it, and figure out in her head what went wrong in the match - just like all the other matches, even though it was against me. I think she'll take some time and come out even stronger tomorrow."

Suffering such a frustrating loss Serena said, "I wasn't playing my best in the first set, but at least I was able to get some serves in," she said. "After that it just kind of fell apart and I couldn't keep more than two balls over the net before I made an error. I've never been in a situation where I just feel like I can’t do anything - usually if I’m not serving well, I can hit a backhand.

"This is definitely the worst match I've played this year by far," I don't know why. I didn't even look like a Top 8 player today. Maybe Top 600 in the Juniors," she said with a smile.