Dear Gossips,
Today is International Women’s Day. It’s the day that Serena Williams returns, playing in the first round at Indian Wells, her first professional tournament since she left the tour during her pregnancy – but only after winning the Australian Open in January 2017. Serena is coming into the match unranked because she’s taken so much time off. And she told The Wall Street Journal that she doesn’t expect to be perfect right away. This is a warmup. Elite athletes like Serena time their peaks. We heard about that a lot during the Olympics. You build your performance schedule so that by the time the event you really want to win comes around, you’ll have the mileage behind you to be able to deliver at that specific moment. I love this about sport, and I wish we talked about it more. So much of our focus is about what happens during the game. But there’s so much work, beyond training, so much strategy that goes into it before you even step on the court, or the ice, or the ring. As I’ve always said about Serena, she’s only able to play the way she does because so much preparation and thinking has happened before her matches. What Serena wants is more slams. The next grand slam is the French Open in May. She has just over two months then to get into match shape to tie Margaret Court’s record of 24. Only three women have won grand slams after having a baby. But none of them were doing it at Serena’s age. They keep talking about how competitive the women’s game is right now, how strong the women’s tour is right now. So of course it’s going to be hard. It should be hard. She probably wants it to be hard. That’s how you get better – by competing against people who want to win just as badly as you do.
Can we talk about how cute her baby is though? Those eyelashes!
Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr is now 6 months old. And her mother is making her comeback. They’re just waiting to drop that lyric at some point, aren’t they? You know the one.
Happy International Women’s Day!
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
