Serena Williams was blasted by Sloane Stephens’ in an ESPN The Magazine story, but said she still supports the young, up-and-coming potential tennis star.
“I don’t really know. I don’t have many thoughts,” Williams told reporters in Spain after defeating Lourdes Dominguez Lino 6-2, 7-5 in the second round of the Madrid Open, answering a question posed to her about Stephens. “I’m a big Sloane Stephens fan and always have been. I’ve always said that I think she can be the best in the world. I’ll always continue to think that and always be rooting for her.
“So I really just always wish her—and anyone, really, especially from America—the best. We don’t have that many American players, so it’s always exciting to see so many young players doing so well.”
Stephens told the magazine that Williams had stopped communicating with her after Stephens’ victory in their quarterfinal match at the Australian Open in January.
“She’s not said one word to me, not spoken to me, not said hi, not looked my way, not been in the same room with me since I played her in Australia,” Stephens says emphatically. “And that should tell everyone something, how she went from saying all these nice things about me to unfollowing me on Twitter.”
Her mom tries to slow her down, but Sloane is insistent. “Like, seriously! People should know. They think she’s so friendly and she’s so this and she’s so that — no, that’s not reality! You don’t unfollow someone on Twitter, delete them off of BlackBerry Messenger. I mean, what for? Why?”
She went on. “For the first 16 years of my life, she said one word to me and was never involved in my tennis whatsoever,” Stephens said. “I really don’t think it’s that big of a deal that she’s not involved now. If you mentor someone, that means you speak to them, that means you help them, that means you know about their life, that means you care about them. Are any of those things true at this moment? No, so therefore…”
Stephens hardly was done. She recalled an encounter with the Williams sisters when she was a 12-year-old in Delray Beach, Fla., at a Fed Cup tie (ironically, the two were Fed Cup teammates two weeks ago in Delray Beach),.
“I waited all day [for an autograph],” she explains. “They walked by three times and never signed our posters.”
Stephens added of the poster: “I hung it up [in my room] for a while. I was, like, devastated because they didn’t sign it, whatever, and then after that I was over it. I found a new player to like (Kim Clijsters) because I didn’t like them anymore.”
