Serena Williams has real-life problems just like everyone else. If there’s traffic, she’ll bike to work. If she wants to take a picture of Tiger Woods, she’ll have to do it somewhere other than at a PGA event. And when she’s having a mid-life crisis at age 30, she does what many people do, buy things! Except to get over moving in the 30s, she bought herself a Rolls Royce!

“Last year or the year before I was turning 30 and I panicked and I thought I needed to get a really old car,” Serena joked yesterday after beating Dominika Cibulkova. “So it was my mid life crisis… Yeah, I really panicked.

“It was really hard for me to turn 30,” she added. “I really struggled, and I was just like, Oh, my gosh. I don’t know, like that kind of came out of it.”

What will she get when she turns 40? A jet? A yacht?

The 31-year-old Serena narrowly avoided an huge upset yesterday. Cibulkova was leading 62, 31 before a flat-footed Serena woke up and took the match 26, 63, 62. The 5-time Miami Sony Open winner will play former French Open champion Li Na this afternoon at 1pm.

“I have to play better tomorrow than I did today,” Serena said. “She’s doing great coming off an injury, but she’s playing great. You know, I think she’s been such a solid player.”