Wimbledon 2013: Serena Williams tries to calm Maria Sharapova row

Serena Williams has refused to escalate her row with Maria Sharapova.

The defending Wimbledon champion angered Sharapova, 26, by speaking about the Russian's personal life in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

Sharapova hit back on Saturday by drawing attention to Williams's private life, despite her rival having personally apologised to her last week.

"Unfortunately Maria was inadvertently brought into a situation she should have never been," said Williams, 31.

"I'm the first person to apologise. I'm the first person to reach out to individuals and people if I feel that something may have hurt them or something may have been misconstrued.

"I personally talked to Maria at the player party. I said; 'Look, I want to personally apologise to you if you are offended by being brought into my situation. I want to take this moment to just pour myself, be open, say I'm very sorry for this whole situation'."

Williams was speaking at her news conference a day before the start of Wimbledon and diplomatically responded to questions about Sharapova making her comments, even though she had apologised beforehand.

"We always have great conversations, so I believe that she definitely did accept it [the apology]," said the American.

"I'm not really going to comment on that (Sharapova's reaction), whether I'm disturbed or not.

"I know she also said that I should definitely focus on the tennis here, and I feel like that is another thing I can definitely take her advice on.

"Maybe I wasn't focused enough in the past on tennis. I'm definitely going to try to focus on that for the next two weeks."