Without Rafa, Muguruza flies Wimbledon flag for Spain

Defending champion Serena Williams could face Heather Watson and Roberto Vinci en route to the final of the Wimbledon Championship this year.

Bonus fun fact: Serena Williams does not watch Game of Thrones.

He has also stated that he feels history is weighing heavily on her and that’s one of the main reason of her results this year. “There is a very high level of expectation and tension on this 22nd grand slam”.

She finished a year ago down the WTA list at 48, where she was this week.

Camila Giorgi will be her first opponent in south-west London and there is every chance that the most recent grand-slam champion could well be shedding tears of joy rather than pain in a fortnight.

“I don’t take anything for granted”.

Muguruza, for her fearless shot-making, athleticism and power, and Kerber, for her unsafe left-handed grasscourt game and confidence that comes with grand slam success, shape as Williams’ biggest dangers.

We see Billie Jean King giving Williams footwork advice, her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou describing their game plans, and Williams unwinding with a night of karaoke.

The Venezuela-born 22-year-old player’s first-round exit in last week’s Mallorca Open was a setback but she is now fully focused on Wimbledon. Final of the French Open. When the director, Ryan White, asks Williams about the constant criticism she receives about her frame (a strong, lovely body that the media has created a racist, misogynistic, and transphobic conversation around), Williams says, “The prototype of a tennis body is like, someone that’s really thin and really tall and really lean”. “It won’t be on my mind much when I return to Wimbledon, though I’m sure that everyone will be asking about it”. You’re like, “Oh, I thought I was going to win”. “I would like to believe I would”, she pondered. It’s been ideal for me, but it’s the player who wins the matches. I felt so good. She ended up as a runner-up in her last two grand slams, but people could not help notice how lackadaisical she had been.

It is either curiously self-deprecatory – and peculiar to tennis – or, more probably, an example of modern sports psychology: keeping the lid on those dark demons that might spring from nowhere to rattle a smash or deliver trembles on match point. “I will play, and I will fight, and when I feel like I’m done I’ll be done”.

She theorizes details of her non-tennis life. “You have to love yourself, and when you love yourself it will manifest in everything that you do”.

When asked to offer some pointers for other budding young stars, Bouchard added: “I wouldn’t do something because of what other people think”. When she won that tournament she was the oldest victor of a major at 33; this September she will turn 35. Director Ryan White got to find out during Williams’ historic 2015 season – a dramatic and ultimately unsuccessful quest to claim all four major tennis titles in one year.