Friday 13 May 2016 11:57, UK
Serena Williams has revealed the agony of eating dog food which hampered her Italian Open preparations on Wednesday.
The top seed in Rome may have overcome fellow American and qualifier Christina McHale to make the quarter-finals but her two-set victory doesn't even come close to telling the story.
Earlier this month, the 34-year-old - who will soon be playing in the French Open - was forced to withdraw from the Madrid Open because of a fever. What happened in Italy this week seems to be completely her own doing!
After coming back from 3-5 down in the opening set and saving a set point in the tiebreak of a 7-6 (7-5) 6-1 win over McHale, Serena said: "Unfortunately it was true."
The question? "Did you eat dog food?"
She first shared the news on Snapchat with a series of videos on Wednesday that she was "really sick" having tasted her hotel's specially prepared food for her four-legged friend.
"They have this menu for my dog, because Chip left his food - can you imagine?" she said on the social media platform.
"On the doggy menu it has soup, and all this other good stuff. So I'm like, "I might want to taste this food'. So I ordered him the salmon and rice, because I thought 'I eat salmon'.
"Before you judge me, look at it. That's the salmon and rice - it's kind of mixed together, right? I thought 'What the heck, I'm going to try a piece. It looks good.' So I ate a spoonful. Don't judge me! I ate a spoonful!
"I don't think it's consumable for humans. They should've wrote that! So now I feel really sick. It was just a spoonful."
Thankfully for Italian tennis fans, she survived several uncomfortable trips to the bathroom and was able to take to the court on Thursday for her third-round clash.
After edging out McHale, she added: "I'm not the most serious person off the court. On the court I am, but off the court I don't have a serious bone in my body."
