PARIS -- Venus and Serena Williams won their fourth consecutive major doubles title Friday at the French Open. "It feels good - we have a Williams Slam," Serena said. "We've four in a row now so we were really excited about that." The sisters earned their 12th Grand Slam title by beating Katarina Srebotnik and Kveta Peschke 6-2, 6-3.
"My dad told Venus to cross more, and so I think she got upset, and she crossed when the person was serving," Serena said. "I remember that," Venus said. "Our older sister was serving." "Oh my gosh, that was so funny," Serena said. "Dad told me I had to play the forehand, because I was young and I was smaller, and then he put Venus on the backhand. It has been like that ever since. That was 20 years ago?" "At least," Venus said.
The Williams Sisters are only the third women's doubles pair to win four major titles in a row. Martina Navratilova and Pam Shriver did it in 1983-84, and Gigi Fernandez and Natasha Zvereva did it in 1992-93.
It's the siblings' second French Open doubles championship, with the other coming in 1999. For several years they played little doubles, but they plan to keep playing together at the major tournaments. "We just realize what it's like to have that major title next to your name, and it's pretty addictive," Venus said. "When you're out there and you're playing singles, it's a great feeling obviously," Serena said. "But also to play doubles with someone that's your sister, your flesh and blood, that's even better."
The sisters said they had no plans to play doubles more regularly on the women's tour, but will continue to play together at the grand slam events. Next stop for both of them will be Wimbledon, where they have won the doubles four times, their last victory coming in 2009.
3 comments:
While I am very happy for both Sisters winning their Grand Slam trophies, I just wish that they were not as self absorbed as I witnessed after this match. There they were celebrating their win. They were yukking it up between themselves while on the sidelines the fans (mostly children) were begging and pleading with them for autographs. Not only did they just give a cursory wave to the crowd after their win (a crowd which was supporting them non-stoop by the way) but they completely ignored the children who were there. I did not appreciate that at all.
In addition, after yesterday's win by Schiavone playing in her first Grand Slam match, right after she won, the NO.1 player in the world and arguably the best of her generation, instead of sending out a congratulatory tweet, decided to make this time in cyber space all about her. Would it have killed her to say congrats to Fran?
For all the talk about Venus and Serena and their spirituality, sometimes they do come across as self-absorbed, arrogant human beings and while I will continue to be a fan, they could surely use some PR counselling about how not to be a self absorbed individual.
I agree with you about signing autographs, but how do you know she did not congratulate Schiavone privately simply because Clijsters chose to do hers publicly? After all Schiavone does not follow Serena on twitter. Twitter is all about her, it's her account, she can say whatever she wants on it. I just don't think you should be self-indignant when you don't know if and how she congratulated Schiavone. Henin, the queen of clay, certainly did not congratulate Schiavone, at least not that I know of.
I doubt if Serena congratulated Francesca, but if she did kudos to her. I just thought that her tweet could have been better timed. It was uncanny that as soon as the match was over, her tweet came out. Maybe nothing to it but as a fan of hers I would have preferred if she had not done so.
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