Fans of Venus Williams will have to wait a while to see the former World No.1 on a tennis court again. The 42-year-old American revealed this week in a video on her YouTube channel that she suffered a hamstring injury in the third set of her Round 2 loss to Zhu Lin at the ASB Classic in New Zealand.
"In the third set, I managed to hurt my leg. I'm running and I'm running, and I feel this pop, and I'm like, 'Oh no,'" she said. "I didn't have enough time to think about whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, but maybe I thought it was bad. I guess my coach my and physio were telling me to call the trainer, but I've hurt my hamstring enough to know that there's nothing to be done once you've hurt it. Either you keep playing or you don't, but there's nothing you can do, so I did not call the trainer.
"I think I just panicked and threw up on myself the rest of the match. I just had shots that I could hit winners, and I just was freaking out and hit them out. I was just going crazy, and walked off the court not the winner of that match."
Williams went on to recount the aftermath of the match in detail, including how she hoped to recover in time to compete at the Australian Open for a 22nd time, 25 years after her tournament debut.
"I remember walking off the court just limping, and thinking, 'This isn't good,'" she said. "So I go upstairs, do a full cooldown, I couldn't really stretch and just rode the bike, and I had my physio work through the leg. She was like, 'I don't want to work through it that much,' and I was like, 'Let's just work on it,' as I'm thinking that the Australian Open is coming up.
"But as the night progressed, and as I ate cookies -- when I lose, my treat is sugar -- and I'm sitting in bed and my leg hurts. It's never a good sign when you're in pain at rest. I really can't walk that well, and I tell my physio, 'Let's get an MRI.' I'm barely walking in this place, shuffling ... walking, barely taking steps. I got my results later that day and, to no surprise, I had some tears in the hamstring attachment.
"I knew. There are times that you know and times that you don't, but I knew that it was going to be a bad injury, and that was the point where I withdrew from the Australian Open."
Williams said she spent the rest of her time off in Australia in Brisbane, visiting some of the team that works on Eleven, her sportswear and clothing brand, and that the trip raised her spirits. She says she's currently in the midst of beginning what will be a lengthy rehab, and plans to keep fans posted with behind-the-scenes videos of the process.
"To be honest, I was super overwhelmed by the injury. I've been injured a long time now, and I couldn't believe I had to go back to rehab," she said. "After about a week, I started setting up my doctors' appointments, and started thinking about what was next for me and trying to really get a handle on how much time it'll take for me to get back.
"This is the kind of injury that you have to let it rest a little bit before you even can start to do serious rehab. But I've started. ... It's definitely [been] a slow start. You have to walk before you run, and right now, I'm starting to walk pretty good. Hopefully, I'll be running pretty soon, but for now, I will not be playing tennis.
"... I think the next step for me is to get to a place where I feel confident in my body again. There are very few times where I've had injuries where I lost confidence. I think my knee injury before, that was the first time ever, and this one, I definitely need to build confidence in it again.
"I'll get there, God-willing, and I'll take you guys on this journey with me back to health, back to tennis, hopefully sooner rather than later."
