Loving serene Serena...

Serena Williams vows to smile all the way to title
The defending champion realised that she was taking herself far too seriously, but says that has changed

By her own admission, the Serena Williams, who is about to begin the defence of the most unlikely title in an astonishing career, is very different from the player who smote her way to victory at last year’s Australian Open.

Taking physical appearances first, she looks like a champion. Fit and conditioned, Williams appears supremely prepared to add to her eight Grand Slam titles.

However, there is a change in the mindset of the woman who, at her peak almost five years ago, dominated women’s tennis during a 57-week stay at the top of the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour world rankings – a period that saw her win five out of the six major prizes. No longer is she guarded, habitually economic with the truth, because nobody, other than her family, was ever allowed to get to know the person inside that body. Now she is open and affable and says her ambition is to enjoy herself in 2008, and one way of doing that is to let the public into the once-mysterious world of the Williams sisters.

She says that the defining moment in her metamorphosis came as she was flying home from Europe in October after a tournament in Zurich. Delving into the self-help book Who Moved My Cheese?, a best-seller about overcoming the fear of making changes in life, she realised she needed to take heed of what the author, Spencer Johnson, was saying.

“I would never read that sort of thing before, I maintained I was allergic to those kind of books,” she says. “I started reading it because I thought it might help my tennis, but after a couple of chapters I realised I was stuck fast in so many aspects of my life – relationships, personal issues, boyfriends, that sort of thing. And I came to appreciate I was frightened of making changes. I felt the book was almost talking to me.

“For so long I had not been able to make a decision while knowing I wanted to move forward. Still on that flight, I pulled out my BlackBerry and wrote 20 e-mails which made big changes. As soon as I landed they all got transmitted. Since then I have not looked back and I’m a different person. I am just so happy. The reason I was so guarded before probably had something to do with the fact that I had to live under public scrutiny for so many years.”

Even last September at the US Open, when she lost for the third time to Justine Henin in 2007’s majors, she barely deigned to face up to postmatch interrogation with any real sincerity. She now sees that as a mistake.

“People viewed me as a machine who, like so many top athletes, was just programmed to win,” she says. “I’m not like that. I have feelings. I felt that fans were warming to me when I made the emotional speech here [dedicating last year’s title to her murdered sister Yetunde]. People saw me as somebody who was vulnerable, and that was nice. Since then I have let more things into my life and allowed my personality to show more. Initially I wanted to keep a lot of things private, but sometimes it’s better to let people see who you really are.”

So how does this new affable persona equate with the desire to prove once again that she is the world’s best, something that requires unseating Henin from the top of the rankings and staying fit?

Last November, she limped away from the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour Championships in Madrid with an injured left knee, with many fearing a recurrence of the injury that required career-saving surgery in 2003.

“I wasn’t concerned because I knew the pain would go away and I’ve hardly taken a break since,” she says. “After the championships I stayed in Spain for a couple of weeks because I like Europe but even though I was on vacation, I was in the gym every morning. When I went home to Florida it was time to go to work with the fitness trainer, and I came here early to play the Hopman Cup. I knew I was ready physically and that’s good because 12 months ago people said things about my shape that weren’t complimentary.”

She drifts back into the vernacular of the self-help book for her final conclusion. “There’s a lot of big tennis this year, a lot of big-time tournaments to be played and my aim is to take care of A and make sure that A is happy. If that is the case, then trust me, the titles will flow in like all the water coursing over Niagara Falls.”