{"id":563875,"date":"2026-04-04T09:56:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T09:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/563875\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T09:56:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T09:56:22","slug":"best-advice-venus-gave-me-tennis-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/563875\/","title":{"rendered":"Best Advice Venus Gave Me \u2013 Tennis Now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Richard Pagliaro | Thursday, April 2, 2026<br \/>Photo credit: Mike Stone\/Getty<\/p>\n<p>A last-minute phone call brought Venus Williams and Leylah Fernandez together last summer.<\/p>\n<p>The pair answered the bell with an inspired run to the US Open doubles quarterfinals last summer.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" data-lazyloaded=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"610\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Pro-Player-Gear-610X150-03.jpg\" alt=\"tennis express pro player gear\" class=\"wp-image-54451\"  data-\/>tennis express pro player gear<\/p>\n<p>Fernandez and Venus Williams reprised their doubles pairing at the Miami Open last month where they bowed to Asia Muhammad and Erin Routliffe 6-3, 3-6, 11-13.<\/p>\n<p>In that Miami Open loss, four-time Olympic gold-medal champion Venus dispenses some of the best on-court advice Fernandez said she\u2019s received.<\/p>\n<p>As the left-handed Canadian was ruing her volley errors, Venus told her: Unless you have a time machine you can\u2019t go back to the past, so forget it and keep moving forward.<\/p>\n<p>Fernandez said it was invaluable perspective coming from the 45-year-old Venus.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe\u2019s a great mentor. I mean, in the last tiebreak, the third set tiebreaker, we were up and we lost it, and I remember I had like a couple of easy shots, easy volleys, and I missed, and I was really heartbroken at the end of the match because I was like really wanted to end the day with a win,\u201d Fernandez said. \u201cAnd [Venus] told me, you know, like I played great, just to keep going, keep forward. If we all had a time<br \/>machine, we would use it, but we don\u2019t, so just keep moving forward.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo with that quote, that definitely helped me to kind of recharge and look at the bright side and<br \/>just keep working the next day and find ways to improve.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Former world No. 1 Venus Williams won 14 major doubles titles with her sister Serena Williams. The pair never lost a major doubles final together.<\/p>\n<p>Though Venus Williams had not planned to play women\u2019s doubles at the 2025 US Open, she changed her mind after receiving a late-night phone call from Fernandez\u2019s team asking if she would team up with the Canadian.<\/p>\n<p>The pair nearly played again at the 2026 Australian Open, but Fernandez had already committed to another partner.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith Venus we kind of kept in contact after the US Open,\u201d Fernandez said. \u201cShe asked me to<br \/>play in Australia, but unfortunately I was already committed with Timea, so that was it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd then I did ask if she was going to the Middle East, but she wasn\u2019t. So we were kind<br \/>of figuring out the perfect time to play together, and Indian Wells and Miami was the two<br \/>tournaments where we could play, and unfortunately, Indian Wells didn\u2019t happen, but there was Miami Open, and it was a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Richard Pagliaro | Thursday, April 2, 2026Photo credit: Mike Stone\/Getty A last-minute phone call brought Venus Williams&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-563875","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}