Serena Williams Speaks Out on Dominic Thiem Controversy: “I’m Too Old for Controversies”

Published 06/29/2019, 3:07 PM EDT

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23-times grand slam champion, Serena Williams clears the air of her spat with Dominic Thiem at the French Open 2019 after the Austrian suggested that she had ‘bad personality.’

In an interview ahead of the Wimbledon Championships 2019, Serena Williams talked about the controversy that took place after Dominic Thiem was kicked out in the middle of a press conference to allow Serena Williams to attend her press conference after her third round loss on the Parisian clay.

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The interviewer asked Serena Williams, “There was a bit of a fallout in your last press conference when Dominic Thiem was kicked out being the main present in the room in Paris for you to come in. I was just wondering if you could give us your side of events. I was just wondering whether you could give us your part of the story.”

Serena Williams who was attending her first press conference after the controversy took place looked to clear the air about her being the ‘bad personality’.

She said, “Yeah, umm I asked them to put me in the small room and I begged them to put me in the I’m a room and they didn’t and I said: ‘listen I’ll come back and so let me, I am just gonna go back’ and they’re like ‘no stay here and then they pulled him out’ and I was like ‘you guys are so rude to do that,’ quote on quote is what I said and the next day I had a bad personality.”

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Serena continued, “so that’s literally what that happened. So I actually stuck up for the guy and so I don’t understand how I got a bad personality for telling them what they did was wrong to him.”

Serena Williams also revealed that she likes Dominic Thiem as a player. She further added, “But we’ve spoke about it. I have always liked him, I still like him. He’s a great like player, I mean he is unbelievable. I am really, quite frankly too old to be in the controversy.”

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Serena Williams also suggested that the media mixed up Thiem’s words about ‘bad personality’. She said, “So that’s why I just wanted to clear the air. I’m like ‘dude I told him that it wasn’t right what they did’ and he said he didn’t say ‘bad personality’ that you guys mixed up his words. It’s all good. I mean that’s literally what happened.”

She later concluded, “They should have never kicked the guy out. It was not cool.”

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Written by:

Varun Khanna

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Starting off as a tennis author in 2018, Varun Khanna has gone on to contribute to EssentiallySports in various capacities. After setting up interviews with the likes of Serena Williams’ coach Patrick Mouratoglou, Alizé Cornet, and Noah Rubin, Varun is now part of all major ATP and WTA press conferences and has gone on to pen more than 1300 articles for EssentiallySports. He now heads the tennis and NBA division of the organization.
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