Serena Williams was match point down and going for broke when she hit her forehand into the middle of the net on Arthur Ash Stadium yesterday.
The five previous match points against her in the same game had been settled by ferocious winners from Williams and against all serious thinking it looked like she might somehow, even at 5-1 down in the final set, claw her way back.
It was not to be and after three hours of a fraught and compelling US Open contest she was done. She is yet to officially resign from the playing life but there will almost certainly be no more of this and everyone knows it.
As her third round opponent, Australia’s Ajla Tomljanovic (in the match of her life, but that’s another story), stood just four points away from a changing-of-the-times victory, many of the 24,000-strong crowd broke into a standing ovation. They were standing, too, in Serena’s box. They knew the moment had come for their great warrior.
“Serena embodies that no dream is too big and no matter where you come from you can do anything if you believe in yourself and have an incredible support system around you,” Tomljanovic, an avowed Serena fan, told the crowd minutes later.
It was an apt tribute.
Telling, too, were Serena’s first words when she took the on-court microphone.
‘Thank you, Daddy’
“Thank you, Daddy. I know you are watching somewhere,” she said.
There was more praise for her parents, and sis got a special mention. “Venus is the only reason Serena exists,” said the tearful champion.
Only the Williams family truly know the extraordinary effort that has gone into the making of two outstanding champions (Venus has five Wimbledon and two US Open crowns) and the nod to dad Richard is telling.
In Louisiana he grew up picking cotton before eventually moving to Los Angeles, where Serena and Venus learned their sport on a public court in Compton with tennis balls begged from local private clubs. Stacking the balls to the brim of a wire supermarket trolley, Richard would wheel his girls on court for hours, day after day.
He was beaten up by gangs who wandered onto his court, something Serena will never forget. Little wonder he came instantly to her mind.
Short speech done, Serena headed off court and through a door that said ‘Players resting area, Quiet Room’. She will need the break.
It recalled another, very different breather in Australia, where Serena spent a lot of time early last year.
It being the height of COVID and with another lockdown rarely more than a sniff away there was no avoiding the mandatory two-week hotel stopover. What was unusual was the Williams sisters choice of venue, an upmarket if nondescript joint in North Adelaide.
There was lure and logic in the choice. Reeled in by the South Australian government, Serena was in town to play a glitzy exhibition match against Naomi Osaka before decamping to Melbourne in pursuit of her 24th grand slam.
Remarkably, shacked in the same hotel as Serena were not only Osaka but Rafael Nadal, Simona Halep, Novak Djokovic (a quarantine must-do he was happy to abide by) and Venus.
On the morning her quarantine was done, Serena headed to Adelaide Zoo with daughter Olympia before rocking up for a press conference along the banks of the river Torrens. There, along with the other champions, she fronted the media, and despite the other big guns it was Serena who stood out.
Weirdly, no-one told the public just who was on show, so it would have been a rare moment of calm for a woman who courts and confronts publicity voraciously. A day or two later at the Australian Open in Melbourne, Serena unveiled a deeply original multi-coloured catsuit in which she not only played well but won. A semi-final exit to Osaka 10 days later would be her last match in this country.
An uncompromising work ethic
For an athlete of any age, Serena was outstanding against Osaka (the winner of the AO singles title that year) but the Florida resident was approaching 40. You wouldn’t have known it then and, as the years advanced, she worked as hard as ever.
Catching her practice session on Melbourne Park’s outer courts in 30 degrees sunshine last year was instructive. Under the paternal tutelage of her then coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, the champ hit for close to an hour against long-term hitting partner Jarmere Jenkins, a perfectionist who puts the ball on the very spot Serena wants every time. Sublime.
Less stately are the rages – and they are well documented. New York can channel her from brash to brattish in an instant. At its worst her behaviour has defiled her sport. The 2018 US Open singles final loss to Osaka and a Big Apple dethronement by Kim Clijsters in 2009 are the most notorious. Aggressive swearing and physical threats to match officials can never be dismissed, but when she feels she is wronged, and this is only when such behaviour occurs, polite society evaporates.
It does not help that such outbursts are often condoned. There is a high profile American cheerleader squad of ex-champs, many now in the media, who routinely excuse almost any behaviour from Williams – a spineless outlook that helps no-one.
That said, it can’t be easy being Serena. It never has been.
Her story is well trodden, the impoverished upbringing in Compton and the father Richard’s realisation that while Venus, the daughter with the supermodel figure, was a winner, it was her sister, younger by just 15 months, who would be the superstar.
Serena duly won her first major in New York in 1999, when she was still just 17, and has now played across four decades. It underlines perhaps the biggest conundrum posed by her career: the greatest of all time (GOAT) or not?
Where and how to rank her?
The equation should be simple. Who has the most grand slams wins the vote. The octogenarian Margaret Court amassed 24, Serena 23 and Steffi Graf (who won all her crowns before she was 30) has 22.
It is nearly six year since Serena won her last slam (Melbourne 2017) and she has lost four grand slam finals since. She will not win another.
The smouldering around this – and it has not always emanated from Serena – has morphed into an almost factual acceptance, in New York at least, that she is the GOAT.
As she headed on court this tournament she was announced as “the greatest of all time”. Digital billboards within Arthur Ashe Stadium blared out the same message while Tina Turner’s ‘Simply the Best’ has been her staple musical backdrop all week.
In her backyard, her status is no longer a debate, and even though she has not eclipsed Court’s record she has been awarded the mantle anyway.
The explanations that were proffered a few years ago – the traumatic birth of daughter Olympia and competing exclusively in the open era, as Court did not, have faded as the GOAT status has been foisted upon her.
The debate has dominated her last few years on tour, yet Mouratoglou is emphatic that numerical validation is not called for. Serena is not as obsessed as many people in the tennis world, he has said.
But if we’re talking impact and wow factor and fear and awe and sheer showbiz, then there is only one greatest of all time. And it’s Serena. And if (already) missing her is a determinant, then she wins hands down.
Her obstacles have been many, not least being a black player in what is still a largely white-dominated sport. She boycotted California’s huge Indian Wells tournament for years on account of alleged racism. In time, though, she has transcended such challenges and this week has had Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods and Mike Tyson backing her at courtside. Vogue‘s style queen Anna Wintour is a long-time friend.
The influence of this woman, still young in non-sporting terms, is incalculable. As well as consummate sporting ability and feel, she overachieves as a fashion designer, businesswoman and charity campaigner. That she is married to a billionaire, Reddit co-founder Alex Ohanian, should be no surprise. How could she find parity with anyone who makes merely millions?
Ever in the spotlight
About 10 years ago, the Australian Open held its post-match press conferences in a small amphitheatre, the players sat by a table at the front with the media vultures perched high above. Mirroring vanquished US Open champion Emma Raducanu this week, Serena would sometimes wear a basketball cap with the peak sharply angled down. It made it nigh on impossible to see her face and, accordingly, interviews were not always a natural fit.
Clearly, she didn’t give a monkey’s and fair enough. Every day, every hour, every few minutes maybe, there will be a demand, many of them peripheral and flighty. She can only respond to so many, do so much.
When she was hitting with Jarmere Jenkins on Court Six last year, there was a serenity about Serena that spoke probably of the real person and athlete. She wore leggings and a tight off-white, long-sleeved, round-necked top – bright colours let alone catsuits were superfluous – and focused only on where Jarmere was about to put the ball and what Patrick Mouratoglou was about to say.
It was all that mattered and how, you might think, she must love that to be the norm.
She is one of the very greatest. We will all miss her.
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