Serena backtracks on ‘lawsuit’ threat

Serena Williams retracted her threat of filing a lawsuit against the All England Lawn Tennis Club after passing off her initial comments made midway through her fourth round match with Svetlana Kuznetsova as something said; “in the heat of the moment.”

The top seed American was seen protesting against the umpire’s initial decision to continuing playing at the risk of injury despite light drizzle falling on Center Court with the scores tied at five games apiece in the first set.

“Serena I think you’re the second player in the tournament to threaten to sue over the rain coming down and play still continuing. Do you think the tournament are taking seriously the welfare of the players when it comes to the rain and taking them off and putting them back on again?

“Yeah, I think they’re doing a great job with that.”

Williams eventually got her way after airing her concerns, with the umpire and both players vacating the court while the retractable roof was deployed.

“Playing on the grass is a little tricky because we don’t even start play until 10 o’clock for practice because of the morning dew on the grass. So you can definitely slide, it’s very slippery out there.

“I just feel like I get so frustrated sometimes and I’m so intense on the court, and I give 200 percent every time I’m there every single point. Sometimes I have to relax and take a deep breathe. I just needed to do that. I can do that on the timeouts, and I think in the past four years that’s something I’ve been doing quite a lot of — really just taking a deep breathe and recollecting myself. So I had a lot more time to do it this time.”

And the defending champion believes time away from court helped regain her composure, coming back in scintillating fashion, taking the next 12 games with no reply to book her place in the quarter-finals.

Looking ahead to forthcoming opponent Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, the 21-time Grand Slam pledges not to enter the match complacently, despite having never lost to the Russian in their five previous meetings.

“She [Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova] is a really good player and we’ve had some tough matches in he past. So I just know that going into that match I definitely need to be ready. I’ve lost to a player that’s never beat me before in the past so I definitely don’t want that to happen.”