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 She’s
acting and designing clothes and has even signed a multimillion-dollar
deal with Nike. But will she be able to maintain her on-court
supremacy?
By Eleanor Preston
The
closest this year’s Australian Open got to Serena Williams
was the word “Aneres,” printed on a vest-top and
worn by her sister Venus during a pre-tournament press conference,
but even though the biggest star in women’s tennis was
8,000 miles away she still somehow managed to be everywhere.
A caricature of Williams as a muscled-up superheroine was
all over the promotional posters at Melbourne Park, wearing
the figure-hugging catsuit that is still her most memorable
outfit and looking like an outtake from one of the X-Men movies.
Serena the player was nowhere to be seen, yet Serena the icon
was just as visible as always.
It’s been a familiar pattern to see Williams’s
face on pre-tournament posters during the last six months,
closely followed by a press release a few days before it starts
regretting her withdrawal from the event. Since her last competitive
match, last year’s Wimbledon final against her sister
Venus, she has pulled out of 12 successive tournaments (stretching
back to Stanford last July) each time citing a torn quadriceps
muscle above her left knee that was so bad it required surgery
last August and was still not sufficiently recovered to allow
her to compete in Australia.
“I can’t wait to start back playing again,”
21-year-old Williams told Ameri-can magazine Upscale recently.
“I wish I was playing right now.”
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