“It’s hard to think about the match or winning another Grand Slam title right now. I just have to hope that tomorrow I will be feeling a lot better and able to give my best on the court.”
As far as statements of confidence go, this is probably not what fans want to hear from their favorite player the day before a French Open final. But that’s where Serena Williams stood on Friday—if she could stand. Suffering from what she called a “kind of flu” that she first felt at the start of the week, Serena was compelled to skip her pre-final practice session and hole up in her hotel room.
“I just want to get better,” she said.
We all know the feeling; any kind of flu, or anything resembling a flu, is no fun, and it was almost painful to watch her fight through it against Timea Bacsinszky in the semis. Though once she was behind, being ill may have actually helped Serena focus; she knew she had to go for the kill, and more often than not, she killed it.
On Thursday, Serena said she hoped her flu had reached its nadir, but it didn’t seem to be any better by Friday. Can she climb out of her sick bed and do it again? It’s still very hard to imagine, even if she says she can’t think of winning a Grand Slam at the moment, that she won’t be doing just that on Saturday afternoon in Paris. The odds are heavily stacked in her favor.
Serena, who has lost one match so far in 2015, is playing in her 24th Grand Slam final. Her record in them is 19-4; she’s won the last six that she’s played, and 11 of the last 12. Her opponent, Lucie Safarova, is playing in her first major final, in 41 tries, at age 28.
