Is it hard for her to meet men? Are they intimidated by her? Venus guffaws. ‘It’s not that hard,’ she says, ‘although I never meet men on the circuit, I tend to meet them back home in Florida. It is hard to find someone who is as tall as me, though (she is 6ft 2in), so I don’t have to wear flat shoes.’
Recently she was seeing an Italian film director, and I ask if she is still a virgin and she almost chokes. ‘Let’s just say I don’t want to go there,’ and I see a twinkle in her eye. Come on, Venus, have you done it yet? She squirms like a teenager and said, “No!, I have never done it before; never slept with any man before.”
Venus Williams Posts A lovable Picture With Niece Olympia
She denies being lonely, holed up in her little house in Wimbledon village. I wish her luck as she signs two tennis balls for me in her careful handwriting, and she goes back to her routine of eat, sleep, train, gym, practise. She is a giant, immensely likeable, shy child-woman whose career has been a cocoon as much as a vehicle to untold riches.
I hope she gets a life outside the court. She so deserves it.
“I have a lot of friends who don’t believe me when I say that I like my life and I don’t want to change it for any reason. I’m not desperate and they don’t believe me,” she said about being single — a status she confirmed in a comical interview at Wimbledon in late June. “They say things like, ‘You’re going to miss your window.’ I’m like, ‘Please, relax. You might feel this way, but I don’t. I don’t want marriage.
