A long way from Washington, D.C., the nine-time Grand Slam champion has been tracking coverage of Barack Obama’s inauguration from Melbourne.
She said she was watching TV reports in the hours ahead of her first-round match at the Australian Open on Tuesday when she felt a kind of tingling.
“This is an amazing moment for American history. Even yesterday, the United States being Martin Luther King’s birthday. To have his birthday and Obama’s presidency fall so close to each other,” she said. “This morning, I was watching on the TV before I went out to play. I looked at my arm, and I practically had chill bumps.”
Serena and her older sister, Venus, have been among the trailblazers for the current generation of African-Americans on the tennis circuit, winning 16 Grand Slam singles titles between them.
“I’m a big fan of African-American history, learning my roots so I can be a better person,” she said. “You just look at all the things that we’ve come through. Now to have this opportunity is amazing.”
Only one win into a sequence of seven she’d need to win a 10th Grand Slam title, Williams thought it probably was wiser to tape coverage of Obama’s inauguration and watch it later rather than stay awake for the event, scheduled for 4 a.m. Melbourne time.
“I’ll probably record it,” she said. “I need my rest for this tournament. But it’s definitely something that I probably will look at.”
Being a Jehovah’s Witness kept her from voting in the election, Williams said, but didn’t prevent her watching Obama’s campaign and victory.
“I try to stay politically neutral, don’t get involved in worldly matters,” she said. “For me, because I am black, seeing that happen, I would be blind if I didn’t take interest in it or I would be lying if I said I wasn’t interested in what was going on. Obviously I am.
“Obviously I was listening to a lot of points that Obama was giving for his election. Some of the things that he said in order to get elected was interesting.”
Serena Williams, trying to maintain her record of winning the Australian Open every alternate year since 2003, was speaking after winning her first-round match over Chinese wild-card entry Yuan Meng.
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