Tennis' biggest stars are desperate to play Serena Williams before she retires
- Tennis' biggest stars are desperate to play Serena Williams before she retires.
- "I have always wanted to play her," the US teenager Coco Gauff said.
Tennis' biggest stars are desperate to play Serena Williams before she retires.
Williams announced earlier this month that she would be retiring from tennis after the US Open, which starts at the end of August.
The 23-time Grand Slam champion next faces Emma Raducanu in the first round of the Cincinnati Open on Tuesday.
After that, opportunities for players to face Williams before she bows out from the sport are slim.
There are only two more tournaments — Tennis in the Land in Cleveland and the National Bank Championships in Quebec — before the US Open, though it is unclear whether Williams will play in either.
"I am a little bit sad because I have always wanted to play her," the American teenager Coco Gauff, who has never faced Williams, told reporters at the Canadian Open last week.
"That's just one of my goals," she said. "I grew up watching her. I mean, that's the reason why I play tennis. And with tennis being a predominantly white sport, it definitely helped a lot because I saw somebody who looked like me dominating the game and it made me believe that I could dominate too."
World No. 1 Iga Swiatek, who has never faced Williams, also said she hopes to do so before or at Flushing Meadows.
"I'm pretty sad on one hand that I wasn't able to kind of play against her," she told reporters in Canada on Wednesday. "Maybe I'm going to have a chance."
In a separate interview with WTA Tennis on Monday, Swiatek said: "I would love to just to see how it is to see her on the other side of the net."
Meanwhile, Raducanu is ecstatic that she will get to play the 40-year-old for the first time.
The British teenager described being drawn against Williams in the opening round of the Cincinnati Open as a "great gift."
"It's an amazing opportunity to play probably the best tennis player of all time," she told DAZN. "It's probably going to be my last opportunity to ever play her."
"I think that, for our careers to have crossed over, I think I'm really fortunate that I get to play her. Whatever happens, I think it's going to be a really good experience for me and something that I will remember for the rest of my life."