Venus Williams relishes “relearning” the game despite Australian Open loss

MELBOURNE, Australia—Who says we stop growing just because we’ve hit a certain age?

At 45 years old, Venus Williams is continuing to embrace the challenge of coming back to top-flight tennis and found many positives despite a 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-4 defeat to Olga Danilovic.

“It was such a great game, such a great moment,” she said to open her post-match press conference. “The energy from the crowd was amazing. That lifted me up so much.

“She played a great game. Also some luck there, as well. That's just the sport. That's how it works sometimes. But it was an amazing moment.”

Williams has slowly built on her initial summer schedule from last year, where she became the oldest woman to win a WTA match at the Mubadala Citi DC Open. Though she initially eschewed the long flight necessary to play the Australian summer, she surprised fans once more by entering a full slate of events in January, culminating with a near-miss against Danilovic, whom she led 4-0 in the final set:

Q. Reflection on when you're up 4-Love, was there a moment where you felt the momentum shift?

VENUS WILLIAMS: Yeah, at 4-Love I felt good. Also it's the biggest lead I've had since I've been back (smiling). In a lot of ways I'm having to relearn how to do things again, if that makes any sense.

I'm really proud of my effort today because I'm playing better with each match, getting to the places that I want to get to. Right now I'm just going to have to keep going forward and working on myself and working to control my errors.

Those are things, too, that come with playing extra matches, like getting your feet in the exact right position, you know, choosing the right shots, all of those things that I'm still learning. It's kind of weird, but it's super exciting to have played that well and to get myself in that position and come very close.

Typically guarded when it came to questions about where she’ll play next, Williams will find more learning opportunities Down Under when she partners Ekaterina Alexandrova in women’s doubles later this week.

“I actually played against her in the US Open,” recalled Williams. “She was super impressive. We played I think it was in the third round. She put up an amazing fight. It will be nice this time to be on the same side of the court.”