Serena Williams’ Criticism of Tennis’ Anti-Doping Program Reveals Larger Problem

When prompted, Serena Williams took a swipe at tennis’ anti-doping protocol during her pre-tournament press conference at Wimbledon on Sunday.

Her response confirmed a trend that has once again become apparent after Marketa Vondrousova received a four-year ban for refusing a test last December: players don’t fully know and understand the rules of the program. 

“They changed the rules now,” Williams said on Sunday. “I didn’t know some of the rules. So apparently if you miss a test outside of your window, it still counts as missed. I’m like, ‘I guess I can’t go pick up my kids.’” 

Williams was referring to the out of competition regulation that allows testers to visit and administer tests outside of a players’ pre-planned hour. She was wrong about critical details, and several pundits took to social media to clarify. 

Karen Moorhouse, the CEO of the ITIA has made the rounds in the aftermath of the Vondrousova ruling, explaining that testing outside of the whereabouts hour is a critical element that allows the testing to be unpredictable. She also clarified, during her many media appearances last week, that if a tester and a player do not connect during one of these unplanned visits, the player is not docked with a missed test. 

Her hard work was appreciated, but we are still wondering how and why the info hasn’t been hammered into the players heads. 

Vondrousova could have avoided her whole dilemma by simply not presenting herself to testers. It makes us wonder: why would any player then take a test out of their pre-declared whereabouts hours if there was no potential penalty for not being home/ available at the time? (the ultimate loophole if there ever was one).

Williams, who said the strict anti-doping regulations were one of the reasons she didn’t want to come back to tennis, would have benefitted from reading the fine print.  

“It’s unprofessional. I hate it,” she said of the program, voicing a miconception. “I think it’s necessary, but I think a lot of the stuff, if I want to go places outside of my window, I should be able to go without having it count as a missed test.

“I think that there has to be a different way to make it reasonable ’cause that’s just unreasonable. That was a big reason why I didn’t want to come back [out of retirement] either, because it’s just so hard. I mean, my life is busy, I run a company, I run a VC company, I travel the world. I have children. It’s like I could be in so many different cities so many different times.” 

Serena’s feelings about anti-doping protocols are still valid, but we’re curious to know if she’ll change her tune after being informed of how this specific corner of the ITIA rule book actually reads. 

Reportedly the ITIA schedules a one-on-one with each player when they entered the program for the first time. Clearly, it’s not enough. 

It takes us back to an issue that we’ve been reminded of since news of Vondrousova’s test broke this week: why aren’t players and their agents in the know about the specifics of the rules?