TENNIS in DEPTH.

Serena’s next outing will be on Thursday, the day The Queen makes her first visit to Wimbledon for 33 years and Serena confessed she is “almost speechless” at the prospect of playing in front of Her Majesty, adding “It is a real honour.” That match, should it be on Centre Court, will be against the Russian, Anna Chakvetadze.

Serena also confided that she has been working on her curtsey ready for a possible introduction to The Queen. “I’m definitely going to work on it a little more, I’m trying to tone down my wrist action,” she laughed.. “It’s something she’ll definitely never forget if I get the chance to meet her.”

Serena dubbed the red outfit she wore on court “Strawberries and Cream”, in honour of Wimbledon. “I thought, this year let’s do something different because I always do white and gold, since gold is one of my favourite colours. So we came up with the cream and the red.

“The red symbolises a lot of the things I do in Africa, like the red laces. Everybody that buys a pair can pretty much save a life in Africa. I wanted to tie that all together with this championship, since it means so much to me.”

On the subject of serving so well in her match (64 per cent of first serves on target and 100 per cent of first serves won) Serena revealed that she had gone home from the French Open upset “because I served so terrible in my last match there”. So, she said, “I had a talk with my serve, told it we got to do a little better.”

That fact that the Centre Court crowd had got behind the underdog, Larcher De Brito, did not bother her in the least, she claimed. “And I would have gotten behind her as well, especially now that I’m watching a lot of the [World Cup] football. I really got behind North Korea. My heart really went out to them.”

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