Serena Williams Can't Take a Rest, Even If She Should

Serena Williams is now prepared to confess what led to her stumbling about the grass in a bizarre and brief doubles match at Wimbledon last year.

"I have a stopping issue," she said in an interview Sunday. "I don't have a quit button. You just can't press control-alt-quit with me. The window will stay open. I do not know when to quit. Look, here I am still playing, and I'm 33." (Serena strengthens top spot after Aus Open win)

Here she is, and off she goes: heading to Argentina shortly after winning the Australian Open for her 19th Grand Slam singles title.

Although Williams said with a chuckle that she has ordered family and people in her support team to rein her in for her own good, she still deemed it best to board an overnight flight out of Melbourne on Monday morning for Los Angeles and was then planning on boarding another overnight flight after a few hours of work for her personal charity. (Evergreen Serena hungry for more Slams)

Her destination will be Buenos Aires, where she intends to play in a second-division Fed Cup match for the United States against Argentina on Saturday and Sunday. If so, she will be part of a powerhouse team that is expected to include her sister Venus, Varvara Lepchenko and the emerging 19-year-old star Madison Keys, now up to 20th in the rankings after reaching the Australian Open semifinals. (Serena, Djokovic live up to top billing)

This is hardly all for the glory of Fed Cup, even though Williams says she enjoys playing for her country and is looking forward to the experience. She needs to play in the International Tennis Federation's annual team competition to be eligible for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Despite resistance from many players and the WTA's leadership, the international federation increased the commitment required to be considered for an Olympic team. Players now need to be nominated to their national team three times, up from twice, in the four-year Olympic cycle, with at least one of those nominations coming in 2015 or 2016.

"None of the players are happy about it," Williams said. "The ITF has their rules, and we did our best to win our case, but we didn't. So we just have to continue to go on and continue to fight later on, but in the meantime, do what we have to do to get to the Olympics."

This will be Williams' second Fed Cup appearance in this cycle. If she does indeed make it to Brazil to defend her Olympic singles title and perhaps her doubles titles with Venus, she will be on the cusp of her 35th birthday.

"Rio's always been a goal for me," she said.

The logical question is whether making two long and nearly consecutive redeye flights, enduring more jet lag and more competition, is the right move so soon after an emotional victory in Melbourne, where she battled a severe cold and, according to Williams, experienced some minor back pain. She also threw up off court during her 6-3, 7-6 (5) victory in the final over Maria Sharapova.

Any concern she might pay a price for her early-season zeal?

"No," she said. "I knew in the season the first month would be very difficult and then, you know, after this it will be pretty easy. I go to Dubai, then I have several weeks off and I'm not playing. I'm only playing two clay court events before the French Open this year. If I can just push through this month, I'll be fine, and when you win, it all seems to be easier."

She is back to winning the big ones after a difficult stretch in 2014, when she hung on to her No. 1 ranking but failed to advance past the fourth round in her first three Grand Slam tournaments. She attributed some of her struggles to "mental exhaustion" accumulated over two seasons of great success and intense effort.

But she bounced back in late summer by winning Stanford, Cincinnati and the U.S. Open. She then won the season-ending WTA Tour Finals in Singapore after recovering from a round-robin rout at the deft hands of Simona Halep. Williams now has won her sixth Australian Open by thriving and serving big under pressure.

Her coach Patrick Mouratoglou said influence and education from her parents had a lot to do with Williams' mental toughness.

"When education meets a personality like Serena, it creates maybe the biggest champion of all time, he added. "She also has something that maybe she was born with, and it's her character, and her character is that she refuses to lose."

She is now just three victories short of Steffi Graf's Open-era record of 22 Grand Slam singles titles and five short of Margaret Court's overall record of 24.

"We have to keep her motivated at the same level of motivation as the one she has now, and fit," Mouratoglou said when asked about Williams' matching Graf. "If she does that and she plays long enough, she will. Because she's improving still."

The record book is helpful as she fights to avoid complacency, but she also has another source of motivation: a new generation that includes Keys and 21-year-old Garbine Muguruza of Spain, who upset Williams at last year's French Open in the second round and took another set off her in Melbourne.

"When I lost to Muguruza at the French, I hated it, hated it so much," Williams said. "But as much as I hated it, I needed it, and I got better. So thanks."

Williams laughed for a moment, then continued: "I need those young kids to show me how to play sometimes. I needed her to do that to me or else, I tell you, I would never have won this tournament."

Williams, who looked trim and quick in Melbourne, can make a tricky game look easy, covering the corners or pounding aces at vital moments, as she did on match point against Sharapova.

But there have still been high-profile health setbacks in recent months, including the Wimbledon doubles match last year when Williams looked dizzy and incoherent, whiffing on one stroke and struggling to put serves into play before finally retiring.

There was initial concern that it might have been a case of medication gone wrong, but she continues to maintain that the culprit was a bad virus that left her disoriented.

"I was just very sick, and that's all I could say, and that's all it was," she said. "It's really difficult for someone to tell me to stop. I did tell everyone in my camp after that, 'Listen, if I'm sick, just beat me if you have to, hold me down, like don't let me go out.'"

She said she had a similar problem in Wuhan, China, last September when she retired from her second-round singles match against Alize Cornet, citing a viral illness and more dizziness.

Williams said she underwent extensive medical testing later in the year.

"I had a bunch of follow-up tests in the fall to see why I was continually getting ill and dizzy and felt like I was going to faint," she said. "I'm on some new vitamins and I've been really good ever since. I don't want to get into details, but I've been really good."

Williams said she also started taking pre-med classes online with an eye toward a higher medical degree.

"I'm supposed to watch a lecture tonight," she said. "I'm going to do all the stuff online that I can, and when I go to school, I'll do the other stuff. I love holistic. I don't know what my degree will be, but I do have to take pre-med, and I want to focus on a lot of holistic medicines."

Asked if she regretted going on court at Wimbledon or the confusion and speculation it generated, she thought for some time before responding.

"Well, I try not to live life in hindsight," she said. "I learn from my mistakes and I try not to make them in the future, and I just think I'm not a quitter. I've got fans waiting for me, and I don't like to let people down in life and in tennis. I've realized that: that actually that's a fault of mine. I always want everyone to be happy, and I've always said that. It's just I always give 100 percent. It doesn't matter if I'm feeling bad, as you could see through this tournament."

The issue resurfaced in Melbourne when Mouratoglou quickly cut short a Friday morning practice before the final because Williams was feeling poorly.

"He took a lot of command," she said. "And he said, 'I should have said something at Wimbledon, and you're not going to play.'"

She said she and Venus also pulled out of the doubles tournament in Melbourne partly because of her back issues and in part to preserve their chances of doing well in singles. Mission accomplished, with Venus reaching the quarterfinals at a Grand Slam event for the first time since 2010.

They played in their first Australian Open in 1998, and 17 years later they were still in Melbourne together. Would Serena still be doing this if Venus were not still doing it, too?

"She influences me so much it would be kind of hard to be somewhere without Venus," she said. "That's a really good question. I don't want to have to answer that. I'm scared. I hope she doesn't end on me. I doubt it. I know she wants to get to Rio, too."

Clearly they both do, as this whirlwind trip to Argentina for a second-tier team tennis match makes clear.