Sloane Stephens shocked the world when she defeated Serena Williams during the Australian Open back in January. In an interview in the May 13 issue of ESPN The Magazine, Sloane Stephens reveals that her relationship with Serena Williams has completely deteriorated since then. Read more after the jump.
“She’s not said one word to me, not spoken to me, not said hi, not looked my way, not been in the same room with me since I played her in Australia,” Stephens says emphatically. “And that should tell everyone something, how she went from saying all these nice things about me to unfollowing me on Twitter.”
Her mom tries to slow her down, but Sloane is insistent. “Like, seriously! People should know. They think she’s so friendly and she’s so this and she’s so that — no, that’s not reality! You don’t unfollow someone on Twitter, delete them off of BlackBerry Messenger. I mean, what for? Why?”
In regards to this tweet Serena sent following the match:
“I was like, ‘You really don’t think I know that that’s about me?’” Stephens tells the magazine.
Stephens also eviscerated any shred of truth behind the overblown mentor-protege angle that many media outlets ran with when the two faced off in January, first in Brisbane and then in Melbourne:
“For the first 16 years of my life, she said one word to me and was never involved in my tennis whatsoever,” says Stephens. “I really don’t think it’s that big of a deal that she’s not involved now. If you mentor someone, that means you speak to them, that means you help them, that means you know about their life, that means you care about them. Are any of those things true at this moment? No, so therefore…”
I offer: “They want the next great American player.”
Stephens says: “They want another Serena.”
Read more on Sports Illustrated
