American star Venus Williams said Tuesday she has never suffered at press conferences, telling French Open reporters: "I know every person asking me a question cannot play as well as me". Williams was responding to Naomi Osaka's belief that post-match media inquests were harmful to her mental health and equated them to "kicking a person when they're down". Osaka withdrew from Roland Garros on Monday. But the 40-year-old Williams said she had her own defence mechanism, developed over a career which has yielded seven majors. "For me personally how I deal with it was that I know every single person asking me a question can't play as well as I can and never will," she said. "So no matter what you say or what you write, you'll never light a candle to me. So that's how I deal with it. But each person deals with it differently." Williams, playing the French Open for the 24th time and a runner-up 19 years ago, saw her 89th Grand Slam end at the first hurdle Tuesday as Russia's Ekaterina Alexandrova eased to a 6-3, 6-1 win. dj/jc