After a false start, Serena gets her practice in

MELBOURNE – Serena Williams had a practice court booked Friday morning – two hours, in case she wanted it.

She lasted just a few minutes before calling it off. The cold she’s been dealing with is still a nuisance, and some footage of her aired on local television running for a passel of Kleenexes to take care of some, er, drippage.

The video also showed her stopping and doubling over on the court.

She said she’d been “taking some medicine, taking some naps.” Williams was back on court to try it again at about 4:30 p.m.

She said she didn’t practice as long as she wanted to. But we can tell you that when she was there, she was CRANKING the ball.

Here’s what it looked like.

Notable was that Williams was wearing a tennis skirt. Most often – especially on non-match days, she’s pretty covered up. Every single practice we’ve seen in Melbourne she was wearing spandex capris.

Often, when she’s doing her shorter pre-match warmup, she’ll have a skirt on. So this was worth noting (and yes, we KNOW there have been exceptions to this non hard-and-fast rule, so no need to list them).

Perhaps she was trying to get herself into “pre-match” mode. It’s not as though it was because the weather was too hot for the longer pants. Far from it.

We’ll see on Saturday how she pulls up.

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