{"id":155407,"date":"2025-06-03T17:59:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T17:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/155407\/"},"modified":"2025-06-03T17:59:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T17:59:13","slug":"serena-williams-involved-in-french-open-press-room-bust-up-with-us-open-champion-who-said-she-had-bad-personality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/155407\/","title":{"rendered":"Serena Williams involved in French Open press room bust up with US Open champion who said she had ‘bad personality’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Among the many highs for Serena Williams, there were also some infrequent lows.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And one of those less glamorous moments came at the French Open<\/a> in 2019, where a surprise early exit would lead to a chain of consequences that would leave another tennis star rather unhappy.<\/p>\n

\"Serena<\/a><\/p>\n

4<\/p>\n

Serena Williams and Dominic Thiem had an indirect conflictCredit: GETTY<\/p>\n

When Williams was sent home after a third round defeat to then 20-year-old Sofia Kenin, she was unsurprisingly not in the best of moods.<\/p>\n

The 23-time Grand Slam champion made 34 unforced errors during her loss to unseeded Kenin as she struggled to get to grips with the game.<\/p>\n

Williams, who has the most majors in the open era, was also chasing the chance to equal Margaret Court’s 24 Grand Slams. <\/p>\n

After the defeat, a dejected Williams had to fulfil her media obligations and was desperate to get them done as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

According to French newspaper L’Equipe<\/a>, Williams told a tournament official, “Put me in another room, smaller, but now” referring to the press conference theaters.<\/p>\n

It led to the official at Roland Garros telling Dominic Thiem<\/a>, who was fulfilling his media obligations in one room, to end his press conference early to make way for Williams.<\/p>\n

The Swiss had just beaten Pablo Cuevas in the third round and was preparing for his opponent, Gael Monfils in the fourth round.<\/p>\n

Thiem hit back at the official at the time of the incident. <\/p>\n

“What the hell? But it’s a joke, really. What’s the point of that, that I have to leave the room because she’s coming?” he said.<\/p>\n

Guy Forget, the tournament director at the time, issued an apology to Thiem, who won the US Open in 2020.<\/p>\n

\"Serena<\/a><\/p>\n

4<\/p>\n

Serena Williams won the US Open in 1999Credit: GETTY\"Dominic<\/a><\/p>\n

4<\/p>\n

Dominic Thiem picked up the US Open in 2020Credit: GETTY<\/p>\n

“Every player has to wait. It shows a bad personality, in my opinion,” Thiem later told reporters.<\/p>\n

“I wasn’t angry or frustrated. Maybe for a couple of minutes or so. It is just the principle. <\/p>\n

“It doesn’t matter if it is me who sits in there, even if a junior is in there.<\/p>\n

“I am 100% sure Roger Federer<\/a> or Rafael Nadal<\/a> would never do something like that.”<\/p>\n

“I don’t know if it was her mistake or only the mistake of the officials,” Thiem later added. “I don’t know if she saw me, or saw someone was in the room. If she’d seen me, it would have been nicer for her to wait.<\/p>\n

“I had an apology [from tournament director Guy Forget]. I don’t know whose fault it is exactly. It was just a very strange thing, I never had something like that before. I’m easy-going. Of course it was strange, but I’ve forgotten it now.”<\/p>\n

The then fourth-seeded Thiem said he understood Williams’ desire to get her media responsibilities done as fast as she could.<\/p>\n

“She lost and everything,” the Austrian said. “So I think it was a little bit mistake of her, mistake of the officials, but as I said, it’s forgotten.<\/p>\n

“It was a funny thing, strange thing, which made a big round in all the social networks, but now I don’t put any attention on it anymore.”<\/p>\n

\"Williams<\/a><\/p>\n

4<\/p>\n

Williams won the 2015 French Open – the last American to win the eventCredit: AFP<\/p>\n

Roger Federer offered his opinion on the situation at the time, aiming blame at those who allowed this situation to even occur.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know what went wrong but something went wrong for this to happen,” the Swiss 20-time Grand Slam champion said.<\/p>\n

“If I would have lost today against Leonardo Mayer, I would let him go first or decide when he wants to go to press as he’s got a next match. My next match is far, far away. So that’s just the way you go about it.<\/p>\n

“There must have been a misunderstanding, or maybe they should have kept Serena still in the locker room, not waiting here in the press centre.”<\/p>\n

Annabelle Croft, a former world No.24 and now tennis commentator, slammed Williams at the time, claiming that she should have just waited.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe should be made to wait an extra five minutes until finished. Had it been a role reversal, there would have been absolute uproar,” she said on EuroSport at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just appalling. I think he\u2019s owed an apology to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Novak Djokovic pays Serena Williams ultimate compliment and closes in on yet another century landmark<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked them to put me in the small room,\u201d Williams said of the incident. <\/p>\n

\u201cI begged them to put me in the small room, and they didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Listen, I can come back. I\u2019m just going to go back\u2019. They were like, \u2018No, stay here\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey pulled him out. I was like, \u2018You guys are so rude to do that\u2019, quote-unquote, that\u2019s what I said. The next day I had a bad personality. Literally that\u2019s what happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually stuck up for the guy, so I don\u2019t understand how I got a bad personality for telling them what they did was wrong to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we spoke about it. I\u2019ve always liked him. I still like him. He\u2019s a great player. I mean, he\u2019s unbelievable.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really, quite frankly, too old to be in controversy. That\u2019s why I just wanted to clear the air.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Dude, I told them that it wasn\u2019t right what they did\u2019. He said he didn\u2019t say \u2018bad personality\u2019, that the media mixed up his words. It\u2019s all good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later, Thiem would actually extend an olive branch to Williams, making it clear that it was likely not her fault but the fault of the organisers.<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably it was not Serena\u2019s mistake,\u201d he told reporters a month later<\/p>\n

\u201cI find her achievements unbelievable, sensational. I would like to make amends with her in Wimbledon<\/a> or the US Open mixed doubles.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn retrospect, it was funny that such an organisational mistake happened at a Grand Slam tournament. What I do not understand is that it blew up so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

So no hard feelings in the end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Among the many highs for Serena Williams, there were also some infrequent lows. And one of those less…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[10088,4294,4719,6740,66039,23380,5066,58921,66036,63029,15172,10095,66040,64901,66037,66038,79,1068,5838,66041,16,15,5067,5069,11911],"class_list":{"0":"post-155407","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-american-tennis","9":"tag-atp","10":"tag-atp-tour","11":"tag-coco-gauff","12":"tag-coco-gauff-french-open","13":"tag-dominic-thiem","14":"tag-french-open","15":"tag-french-open-draw","16":"tag-french-open-next-match","17":"tag-french-open-schedule","18":"tag-roland-garros","19":"tag-serena-williams","20":"tag-serena-williams-dominic-thiem","21":"tag-serena-williams-french-open","22":"tag-serena-williams-french-open-titles","23":"tag-serena-williams-grand-slams","24":"tag-sports","25":"tag-tennis","26":"tag-tennis-news","27":"tag-thiem","28":"tag-uk","29":"tag-united-kingdom","30":"tag-us-open","31":"tag-wta","32":"tag-wta-tour"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}