Last to Know
****WIMBLEDON, England—Venus Williams put on an awfully good front for a long time in the press conference following her 6-1, 6-3 loss to Elena Vesnina today, the first day of Wimbledon. She spoke about how she felt on the heels of such a comprehensive beating ("I've lost before so I know how to deal with it"). She spoke about the amount of prep time she had after the French Open, where she lost by a very similar score, albeit to the world No. 3, Agnieszka Radwanska ("I had the same amount of time as everybody else"). She even said she would be back at Wimbledon next year ("I'm planning on it").
But that front crumbled, if not very obviously and only fleetingly, when the five-time Wimbledon champion was asked what might drive her to keep playing after she fulfills the only concrete ambition she declared for 2012, participation in the upcoming Olympic Games right here in London (the tennis event will be played at Wimbledon, in early August).
"I feel like I am a great player," she began, in that familiar calm, opaque way. But she quickly amended that. "I am a great player. Unfortunately, I had a deal with circumstances that people don't normally have to deal with in this sport (a reference to her ongoing battle with the auto-immune system disease from which she suffers, Sjogren's Syndrome). But I can't be discouraged by that, so I'm up for challenges. I have great tennis in me. I just need the opportunity." She was sounding more positive, more forceful, but she was unable to control the note of frustration, perhaps even outright bitterness, that suddenly crept into her voice as she went on. "There's no way I'm just going to sit down and give up just because I have a hard time the first five or six freakin' tournaments back. You know, that's just not me."
"Freakin'." She spat that word out as if were a bad seed. It looked for a moment like she might cry.
Anyone who had doubts about Venus's degree of commitment or her desire to remain a player—preferably the "great player" who has been the most dominant champion at Wimbledon since Steffi Graf—had to stop and digest that oh-so-small but oh-so-real outburst. It takes a lot to break through that veneer of remoteness behind which Venus usually takes refuge. It probably takes something like a deadly combination of age (Venus is 32), health problems, questions thinly veiled as an invitation for Venus to declare herself retired, and a first-round loss—on Court No. 2 to the No. 79 player in the world.
And it probably takes a sense that all of it, or so much of it, so much of what was good and satisfying and pride-worthy and even historic, could be slipping away. Some people allow things to slip away from them easily; they can afford, or perhaps it's that they need, to be philosophical about it. Venus Williams is not one of those people. And as much as she's achieved, she still has that champion's determination—that glorious blindness—telling her that she can go on. That she can do it, one more time, even when she is running out of one more times.
Of course she's coming back to Wimbledon next year. To say she may not, or even that she will think about it, would have been to throw a juicy bone to all those who would like nothing better than to rush out of the press interview room to write the "Venus Retires!" story. Why journalists are so obsessed with that theme is beyond me; perhaps every sportswriter secretly covets a slot on the obit desk. My prediction: That's one bit of satisfaction Venus will never give the press. When she retires, we'll be the last to know, just like we were the first to ask.
The way she's got things lined up, that "one more time" for Venus may be at the Olympics. She's taken the short view all year in that regard, building her entire season around the task of getting her ranking high enough to earn direct entry into the Games. She's achieved that, admitting: "Well, that's all I've fought for this whole year, so I hope that I can play well there. For me it will just be an honor to be there, and try to capitalize on that moment."
To that end, when Venus and her sister Serena are finished with singles and doubles here (that glass is still 66 and 2/3 percent full) it's unlikely that we'll see Venus again for a six or seven weeks. She has no plans to play anything leading up to the Olympics, even as a warm up for the Games. And where she goes after that—well, it's anybody's guess, although she may very well find her way back here in 2013. After all, the place has been very good to her, and she's been very good for the place.