Venus Williams will exit the Australian Open $5000 worst off after being fined for skipping her mandatory press conference on Tuesday.
The world No.10 was scheduled to talk to the press following her shock straight sets loss to Great Britain’s Johanna Konta in the first round on Tuesday. Under tournament policy, a player can be fined up to $20,000 for skipping a press conference without a good reason. The hefty fine is the biggest given to a player since Marat Safin was fined $10,000 for a similar offense during the 2001 French Open.
Due to the absence of Venus, it was left to her sister to answer a series of questions. World No.1 Serena told the media that she was unsure why her sister decided to skip the media conference.
“If you want to, you can ask her,” Serena said.
“Yeah, I don’t know. I wasn’t here. In fact, I was watching Telenovela.”
The sour exit from Melbourne this year has left some questioning if this will be the last time the tournament will see the 35-year-old. Williams has played at the Australian Open 15 times since 1998. Her best performance at the tournament was runner-up in 2003. When asked about her sister’s future intentions, Serena said that she ‘assumes’ that Venus will return in 2017.
“From what I assume, yeah, but I don’t really know”. The world No.1 said.
“I would assume. She’s never mentioned anything about not being here, not competing.”
The incident isn’t the first time that Williams has been fined for skipping a press conference. Last year at the French Open she was fined $3000 for committing a similar offense.
Meanwhile, Nick Kyrgios was also fined $3000 by tournament officials. The Australian received the fine after swearing during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta. This fine does not have any impact of Kyrgios’ six-month 28-day suspended sentence penalty. He was handed that penalty following his well publicized confrontation with Stan Wawrinka last year. The reason why the fine will have no impact is because the suspended sentence only applies to ATP matches and not Grand Slam tournaments.
