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      For Serena Williams, Tennis — Not Motherhood — Was a Sacrifice

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      When given the opportunity to write an essay in the September issue of Vogue, one that would touch on how she expects to “evolve” away from tennis, Serena Williams started by talking about her daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr.Her daughter, whom she calls Olympia, wants a little sister.And Williams? She and her husband, Alexis Ohanian, would like that too.“In the last year, Alexis and I have been trying to have another child, and we recently got some information from my doctor that put my mind at ease and made me feel that whenever we’re ready, we can add to our family,” Williams said in Vogue. “I definitely don’t want to be pregnant again as an athlete. I need to be two feet into tennis or two feet out.”She is gearing up to walk both feet off the court, and in doing so, she continues to model what family planning can look like at the highest levels of sport.In April 2017, Williams announced she was pregnant to the world by accident, uploading a photo of herself with the text “20 weeks” to Snapchat. The news, once confirmed, had fans doing some quick math. She had been about eight weeks pregnant when she won the Australian Open earlier that year.She gave birth to Olympia on Sept. 1, 2017, and was bedridden for the first six weeks of motherhood because of a life-threatening pulmonary embolism.She was soon plotting her return to the court, joining a long list of women who made it back to the highest levels of their sport after childbirth not just to compete, but to win.In 1960, two years after giving birth to her daughter, the sprinter Wilma Rudolph won three gold medals at the Rome Olympics. Joy Fawcett, a three-time Olympian, was among the first American soccer players to have children midcareer — she played every minute of the World Cup in 1995, 1999 and 2003, each competition a year or two after giving birth to one of her three children. And the Olympic swimmer Dara Torres returned to competition just a few weeks after giving birth in 2006, won a national title in the 100-meter freestyle in 2007 and took home three silver medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.It’s a list that continues to grow and now includes the sprinter Allyson Felix, the most decorated U.S. track and field athlete in Olympic history, who returned to the global stage after having an emergency cesarean section at 32 weeks in 2018. A few weeks ago, Felix ran her last world-championship event in a full stadium of fans who gave her a standing ovation. Her daughter, Camryn, now a toddler, was in the stands.Tennis is a uniquely grueling sport for new parents. Much of the calendar year is considered in season, and much of that season is spent crisscrossing the globe for tournaments.But returning to the biggest stages in the world did not seem to be much of a question for Williams. “I went from a C-section to a second pulmonary embolism to a Grand Slam final. I played while breastfeeding. I played through postpartum depression,” she wrote. She reached her 10th Wimbledon final in July 2018, less than a year after childbirth.Williams’s daughter hasn’t been far from the stands since. There’s Olympia at the Fed Cup, sporting a red-and-white headband with a glitter bow. And at the ASB classic, sitting on her dad’s lap, clapping, eager to see what shiny trophy Mom has this time. At the Top Seed Open, she was spotted in the stands, a bit distracted by an iPhone (happens to the best of us). And she had a front-row seat to the U.S. Open bubble of 2020, pointing and saying “mama” in a nearly empty stadium.In the past five years, Williams said, she has not spent more than 24 hours away from her daughter.But Williams made one thing clear. Her evolution (retirement, she said, is not a word she likes to use) is not an easy decision; it’s not one she’s been able to talk about with anyone other than her therapist. This is not a simple ride into the sunset. No, it’s a more difficult decision — one that she really didn’t want to make.“Believe me, I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family. I don’t think it’s fair. If I were a guy, I wouldn’t be writing this because I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labor of expanding our family,” she said. “Maybe I’d be more of a Tom Brady if I had that opportunity.”That’s the case for 36-year-old Rafael Nadal. He announced that his wife, Maria Francisca Perello, is pregnant with their first child. In a news conference in June, Nadal, the winner of 22 Grand Slam singles titles, said, “I don’t think it will change my professional life.”Indeed.Williams knows exactly how becoming a mother changed her professional life. “The fact is that nothing is a sacrifice for me when it comes to Olympia. It all just makes sense,” she said, continuing, “I think tennis, by comparison, has always felt like a sacrifice — though it’s one I enjoyed making.”Before she steps off the court for good, she may have a few more performances to put on for the almost-5-year-old fan in the stands, excitedly waving her arms for her mama. More

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      Serena Williams Will Retire Tennis Just as She Played — on Her Own Terms

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      Williams brought her own distinctive flair to tennis, challenging norms that governed fashion, power, decorum, race and gender. By being herself, Williams’s reach far exceeded the game.She is a symbol. A persona. An athlete who has gone far beyond the footsteps of her trailblazing sister and came to rule a cloistered, mostly white sport. She refuses to stop there.Announcing her plans to retire from tennis, Serena Williams said on Tuesday that she will focus her life far beyond sports, instead prioritizing being a mother, a fashion maker, a venture capitalist and much more. She will design her future as she sees fit.That’s oh-so-Serena.She has always done it her way, always operated on her own terms. It has made her special, uniquely skilled and beloved — and has sometimes drawn criticism. It has helped her become one of the greatest athletes to ever grace us — a Black woman who grew from the humblest of American beginnings into a star whose magnetic pull reaches far beyond the bounds of sport.Her announcement, in a Vogue magazine cover story released Tuesday, that she would be leaving tennis after playing the U.S. Open later this month, befitted the transcendent figure she has become.It is easy to forget that her championship journey, which came to include 23 Grand Slam singles titles, just shy of the record of 24 set by Margaret Court, began with a win at the U.S. Open in 1999. At 17 years old, Serena became the first Black player since Arthur Ashe in 1975 to win a Grand Slam singles title and the first Black woman to emerge victorious in a slam since Althea Gibson in 1958.Williams won her first of 23 Grand Slam titles by defeating Martina Hingis at the 1999 U.S. Open.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesWilliams became the personification of athletic greatness and — for at least two decades — carried the aspirations of gender and racial equity.Along the way, she showed the world the incredible power of breaking boundaries and obliterating norms. The Vogue article, a first-person account, feels tellingly symbolic, even if it was long expected, given Williams’s struggles competing in recent years. She did not break the news on her Instagram account, on ESPN, or in a post-match news conference. No, Williams does what she wants, when she wants, in the way she wants.Of course she has Anna Wintour, Vogue’s tennis-loving editor, on speed dial. Of course she would announce that she is making a break from tennis through one of the world’s premier fashion magazines.Serena Williams has never let tennis define her.With the retirement news, our memories of her come in waves. Oh, how she loved to entertain and put on a show. Isn’t that what drew us in? She had a knack, a hunger, a desire that demanded to be seen. Watching her stride upon a Grand Slam center court for a first-round match or a pressurized final was entertainment at its best. She drew multitudes to the moment, bringing along those who would never otherwise watch a tennis match.Those new fans, and many tried-and-true tennis lovers who had watched the game for years, stood behind her when she struggled or found herself enveloped in disputes over the fierce way she sometimes punctured norms of on-court decorum.Who can forget the 2018 U.S. Open, when she heatedly clashed with the chair umpire who docked her first a point and then an entire game toward the end of a loss to Naomi Osaka? The full spectrum of her career in tennis — the dozens of heart-racing wins and the occasionally torturous upsets — weaves into the tapestry that is Serena Williams.Williams confronting chair umpire Carlos Ramos during her U.S. Open final loss to Naomi Osaka in 2018.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesRace can never be discounted when we speak of Serena, or of Venus Williams, the older sister who started it all. Their Blackness and their physical stature, cast against a tennis world where only a few shared a similar look, felt showstopping.Ashe and Gibson were fine players who were occasionally great. Yannick Noah, the mixed-race son of a Black Cameroonian father and white mother, won the French Open in 1983. A smattering of other Black players, male and female, made brief but important marks on tennis.Nobody strode atop the game or dominated it with the pounding consistency of the Williams sisters.Serena added a bold defiance to the undertaking, as predicted with certitude by their father, Richard Williams, who even when Venus was splashing first upon the tennis scene said it would be Serena who would become the best in tennis history.Can you imagine Jimmy Evert, Chris Evert’s father, coach, and a member of the tennis establishment, saying the same about his daughter as she burst upon the scene in the early 1970s?Nothing Serena Williams ever did was confined by tradition. She defied the status quo and played with a mix of consistent, poleaxing power and touch at the net, energized by a serve for the ages and a boxer’s steely will.Only the elite of the elite can change the way their sport is played. Think of Stephen Curry’s influence over modern basketball and its fixation with outside shooting. Or Tiger Woods’s revolutionary impact on golf. Add Williams to the mix.Williams defied the status quo and played with a mix of consistent, poleaxing power and touch at the net, energized by a serve for the ages and a boxer’s steely will.Calla Kessler/The New York TimesOthers played a power game before her — Jennifer Capriati, for example — just as there were other 3-point shooters before Curry. Williams took the game to new heights. She went into that 1999 U.S. Open final against Martina Hingis, who had catapulted to the top of the rankings by playing with finesse and exploiting every angle as prescribed by the old guard. After Williams’s power, speed and grit dispatched Hingis, 6-3, 7-6, tennis would never be the same.Think of not only Williams’s game but her style — how she stepped beyond the old norms of fashion and appearance codified in tennis since the Victorian era.Williams showed up as her full self, her hair braided or beaded or sometimes colored blond. On the court, she wore outfits of every color: blue, red, pink, black, tan, you name it. She donned studs, sequins and boots disguised as tennis shoes — or was it the other way around?She wore clothing that flowed and swung, or that proudly showed her stomach and strong shoulders. She made the full-body catsuit a thing at the U.S. Open of 2002 and the talk of Paris at the French Open of 2018.“I feel like a warrior in it, a warrior princess,” Williams told reporters at the French Open, as she referred to the movie “Black Panther.”“It’s kind of my way to be a superhero.”Sure, noting her fashion might seem superficial and superfluous. But not in this context. Black women’s bodies and fashion are often harshly criticized in ways that white women don’t usually experience. Moreover, tennis is one of those games bound by a tradition of exclusion and uniformity. Williams blew all of that up.Williams in her catsuit at the 2018 French Open.Matthew Stockman/Getty ImagesHere’s another way she leaped beyond old bounds. Recall that Williams won the 2017 Australian Open while she was two months pregnant. Then remember that she nearly died in labor. Then recall her comeback after giving birth to Alexis Olympia. She would make four more major championship finals.She lost all of them, true, and none were close matches. But Williams was past her best years, with a child at her side and the business world beckoning. And her comeback from pregnancy helped lead to an important rule change in women’s professional tennis — allowing players to enter tournaments based on their pre-pregnancy rankings for up to three years after giving birth.Now, Williams plans to end this phase of her life after her last match at the U.S. Open, whether it’s a first-round loss or yet another against-all-odds denouement: winning it all, at 40, after barely stepping on the tour over the past year.She won’t walk away with ease. She made that clear as she announced what she termed to be her “evolution,” which will include trying to have another child. Her attempts, she said, were at odds with continuing her tennis career, a fact she noted that male professional athletes do not have to contend with.This looks like the final stage of her career, but we should never be surprised by Williams. I wouldn’t be shocked if perhaps with a second child or more in tow, she pops up on the professional tour again, even for just one more bite of the sports limelight.If Serena Williams wants to, she’ll do it. This much we know. More

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      Charts Show Serena Williams’s Storied Career in Tennis

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      Serena Williams has signaled that the U.S. Open that begins later this month could be the end of her storied career. She won her first Grand Slam — the U.S. Open — in 1999, when she was 17 years old, beating the top-seeded Martina Hingis. She went on to become the sport’s most dominant force […] More

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      Serena Williams Says She Will Retire From Tennis Sometime After U.S. Open

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      The world first came to know Serena Williams as a 17-year-old with beaded braids, overwhelming power and precocious intelligence and poise when she stunned her sport by winning the first of her 23 Grand Slam singles titles at the 1999 U.S. Open.So began a journey that, with plenty of help from her sister Venus and her trailblazing parents, changed the game, transcended tennis and turned Williams into a beacon of fashion, entertainment and business, shifting the way people inside and outside of sports viewed female athletes.On Tuesday, Williams set the stage for the tennis part of that journey to conclude at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center and the U.S. Open, where it began so many championships, battles, fist pumps and screams of “Come on!” ago.In a first-person article in the famed September issue of Vogue, published online on Tuesday, Williams said that she planned to retire from the sport after playing in the U.S. Open, which begins later this month, for the 21st time. And as she has for more than two decades, Williams made the announcement with her own unique twist, stating in the as-told-to cover story that she has “never liked the word retirement,” and preferred the word “evolution” to describe her next steps.“I’m evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me,” including working with her venture capital firm and growing her family, she said.Williams was not explicit about when she might stop playing, but she hinted on Instagram that the U.S. Open could be her last tournament while leaving the door ever-so-slightly open to continue, or to come back, as players who retire often do. “The countdown has begun,” she said, adding, “I’m gonna relish these next few weeks.”Williams is playing this week at a U.S. Open tuneup tournament in Toronto and is scheduled to play in Cincinnati during the next week.Asked Monday after her straight-sets win over Nuria Parrizas-Diaz of Spain what motivated her now, Williams said “the light at the end of the tunnel.”“Lately that’s been it for me,” she added. “I can’t wait to get to that light.”Though some in tennis are skeptical that Williams will step away imminently, exiting the stage this year at the U.S. Open would be a fitting end to her storied career. Williams has won the singles title there six times, beginning in 1999, when she leapfrogged her older sister Venus to claim the family’s first Grand Slam championship 23 years ago, a number that matches her career Grand Slam tally. The tournament has also been the site of some of Williams’s lowest moments, including confrontations with umpires and tournament officials in the semifinals in 2009 and the finals in 2018.Williams has won each of the Grand Slam tournaments at least three times.Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The NYT; Chang W. Lee/NYT; David Vincent/AP; Daniel Berehulak/Getty“It feels like the right exclamation point, the right ending,” said Pam Shriver, the former player and tennis commentator who was one of the great doubles champions of the 1980s. “It doesn’t matter her result.”Williams’s tennis future has been in doubt since she was forced to retire minutes into her first-round match at Wimbledon last year after she tore her hamstring.The injury sidelined her for nearly a year. In fact, Shriver and others thought it was likely that Williams might never officially retire but would instead continue the existence that she assumed for months following her teary Wimbledon exit.This spring though, Williams said she had the urge to play competitively again. In the Vogue story, she stated that Tiger Woods persuaded her to commit to training hard for two weeks and see what transpired. She did not immediately take his advice but eventually began hitting and signed up for the doubles competition at a grass court tournament ahead of Wimbledon .At Wimbledon, she played a spirited but inconsistent three-hour, first-round match, losing to Harmony Tan of France, 7-5, 1-6, 7-6 (7). She showed flashes of the power and touch that had once made her nearly unbeatable, but lacked the fitness and match toughness that comes from being a regular on the WTA Tour.Williams wrote that she and her husband, Alexis Ohanian, planned to have another child, though she lamented the choice between another child and her tennis career. She expressing envy that some male athletes, like the 45-year-old N.F.L. quarterback Tom Brady, could continue to compete while their female spouses had children.“I definitely don’t want to be pregnant again as an athlete,” she said. “I need to be two feet into tennis or two feet out.”Williams won her last Grand Slam tournament title while she was pregnant during the Australian Open in 2017.Williams has won nearly $100 million in prize money, but her tennis career has hardly prevented her from pursuing her other interests. She has frequently helped design her tennis outfits. She was an executive producer of “King Richard,” the Oscar-winning film about her family that focused on how her father took two girls from Compton, Calif., to the pinnacle of sports. In recent years, she has become a venture capitalist, creating Serena Ventures, which invests in early stage ideas and companies, many in technology and run by women.Williams at the Vanity Fair party at the Oscars. “King Richard” was nominated for six Academy Awards.Hunter Abrams for The New York TimesOn the tennis court, for the moment, Williams remains second to Margaret Court of Australia in Grand Slam singles championships, a record she had many chances to tie and then surpass in 2018 and 2019 when she lost four Grand Slam finals without winning a set. However, because many of Court’s wins predate the modern era of professional tennis, that shortcoming is unlikely to tarnish Williams’s legacy as the greatest female tennis player, one of the greatest players, and one of the best athletes in any sport.“When Serena steps away from tennis, she will leave as the sport’s greatest player,” said Billie Jean King, the champion and pioneer of sports. “After a career that has inspired a new generation of players and fans, she will forever be known as a champion who won on the court and raised the global profile of the sport off it.”Beyond all the championships — Williams has won 73 singles titles, 23 in doubles, two in mixed doubles and has played on four Olympic teams, winning four gold medals — her impact on how the world perceives female athletes and inspiring the younger Black girls who now lead American women’s tennis may be her greatest legacies.With a unique mix of power, strength, speed, touch and the tennis intelligence that produced her dominance, Williams made irrelevant the distinction between great male and female tennis players as no woman had done. Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, the great male tennis players of the 21st century — and the greatest the men’s game has ever produced — spoke of Williams as one of them.Last year at the U.S. Open, as the pressure mounted on Djokovic to win a rare calendar year Grand Slam, he said only Williams could understand what he was going through.Williams came to the U.S. Open in 2015 having won the year’s first three Grand Slam singles titles but lost to the unseeded Roberta Vinci of Italy in the semifinals. Winning the title that year would have given her a fifth consecutive Grand Slam singles championship, since she had already won four consecutive Grand Slam singles titles for the second time, a feat now known as the “Serena Slam.”Williams signing autographs after a workout at the U.S. Open in 2015.Earl Wilson/The New York TimesNone of this has surprised Rick Macci, the famed professional coach who three decades ago evaluated Serena and Venus Williams playing in a rundown park in Compton when Black girls, especially poor ones, rarely pursued tennis. At first Macci was not impressed, but when the girls started playing points everything changed.“There was a rage inside these two little kids once we kept score,” Macci said in an interview Tuesday. “They ran so fast they almost fell down. I took a huge chance because of what I thought I saw on the inside, and I haven’t seen it since.”Coco Gauff, the rising 18-year-old who is the latest Black American player to bear the burden of being labeled “the next Serena,” said Williams was “the reason why I play tennis,” after her win Tuesday in Toronto.“I saw somebody who looked like me dominating the game,” Gauff, ranked 11th in the world, “It made me believe that I could dominate, too.” More

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      When and Where to Watch Serena Williams Play Before She Retires

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      Those interested in watching Serena Williams on her road to retirement will have opportunities to do so in at least three tournaments.“I don’t know if I will be ready to win New York,” Williams said in a Vogue cover story announcing her retirement, referring to the U.S. Open. “But I’m going to try. And the lead-up tournaments will be fun.”Her next match is set for Wednesday in the round of 32 of the National Bank Open in Toronto against Belinda Bencic, a Swiss player ranked 12th who defeated Tereza Martincova on Tuesday. Williams will be scheduled for a night match, the tournament said on its website. Bencic, 25, last faced Williams at the 2017 Australian Open.National Bank Open matches are televised by its official broadcasters Sportsnet and TVA Sports. In the United States, the Tennis Channel is broadcasting the Canadian tournament, and some matches are available on Bally Sports.After the National Bank Open, which ends on Sunday, Williams is expected to play in Mason, Ohio, a Cincinnati suburb, at the Western & Southern Open, which runs Aug. 13-21. The tournament said on Twitter that it was “honored to be a small part of” Williams’s career.“We’re so excited to watch her at our tournament this year,” the tournament said.Williams is expected to play outside Cincinnati with a protected ranking that has yet to be determined. The tournament, which has tickets available online, is set to feature a number of formidable players, including Iga Swiatek, the No. 1-ranked player on the women’s tour, and Emma Raducanu, the reigning U.S. Open champion.After the Western & Southern Open, there are two more tournaments before the U.S. Open — Tennis in the Land in Cleveland and the National Bank Championships in Granby, Quebec. Player lists for the tournaments, which run concurrently Aug. 21-27, have not yet been released, and it was unclear whether Williams will play in either.The U.S. Open, the last Grand Slam tournament of the year, begins Aug. 29 and runs through Sept. 11. The tournament will be televised by ESPN, and has tickets available online. The women’s final is scheduled for Sept. 10.While the U.S. Open draw has not been set, the first chance for fans to see Williams would be during the first round of the tournament on Aug. 29 or 30, a match that would most likely be played inside Arthur Ashe Stadium.“I’m not looking for some ceremonial, final on-court moment,” Williams told Vogue. “I’m terrible at goodbyes, the world’s worst. But please know that I am more grateful for you than I can ever express in words. You have carried me to so many wins and so many trophies. I’m going to miss that version of me, that girl who played tennis. And I’m going to miss you.”Williams was vague about her plans after the U.S. Open, and did not pinpoint exactly when she would wind down her time in the sport. More

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      Serena Williams Forced Her Way Into the Tennis History Books

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      With her dominant strokes and smart moves off the court, Williams helped redefine how to be a superstar athlete.Serena Williams’s fellow tennis professionals already know what their sport is like without her.She has played very little in the past two years and has played just two singles matches in the past 13 months.But as Williams, now 40 years old, made plain in announcing her impending retirement on Tuesday, it will very soon be time for the wider world to become accustomed to her absence from the courts, as well.Tennis is a global game, which is a big part of its charm, and despite Williams’s part-time status of late, if you ask anyone on just about any street to start naming women’s tennis players, the first name most would produce would still be Serena Williams.With her technically sound and forceful serve, she possessed perhaps the most decisive shot in the long history of the women’s game. But there has been much more to her tennis: powerful, open-stance groundstrokes; exceptional and explosive court coverage; and a ferocious, territorial competitive drive that helped her overcome deficits and adversity throughout a professional career that has lasted a quarter century.At her peaks — and there were several — she was one of the most dominant figures in any sport: able to overwhelm and intimidate the opposition with full-force blows and full-throated roars, often timed for maximum effect.With her technically sound and forceful serve, Williams possessed perhaps the most decisive shot in the long history of the women’s game.Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York TimesBy force of serve and personality and long-running achievement, she has become synonymous with tennis while managing to transcend it as a Black champion with symbolic reach even if she long eschewed political or social commentary, in part because of her upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness. Years after Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe blazed trails for Black champions, Williams created new paths for modern athletes balancing competition and outside pursuits.Her off-court world — including acting, fashion design, venture capital, family life and motherhood — most likely allowed her to remain fresh and competitive far longer than expected. And we are not just talking about the public’s expectations. Her father and longtime coach, Richard Williams, clearly had vision: He dreamed up a far-fetched and ultimately right-on-target family plan for Serena and her older sister Venus to dominate women’s tennis. But he also predicted that both would retire early to devote themselves to other endeavors.Father did not know best in this instance. Both sisters have played into their 40s, displaying an undeniable love of the game that is rather surprising considering that they were given no choice in whether they would play it.“I got pushed hard by my parents,” Serena Williams wrote in the Vogue essay released on Tuesday announcing her impending retirement. “Nowadays so many parents say, ‘Let your kids do what they want!’ Well, that’s not what got me where I am. I didn’t rebel as a kid. I worked hard, and I followed the rules.”She then talked about her 4-year-old daughter, Olympia. “I do want to push Olympia — not in tennis, but in whatever captures her interest,” Williams said. “But I don’t want to push too hard. I’m still trying to figure out that balance.”Richard Williams, left, clearly had vision: He dreamed up a far-fetched and ultimately right-on-target family plan for Serena and her older sister Venus to dominate women’s tennis. Marilynn K. Yee/The New York TimesIt is a delicate dance, and my suspicion is that many a tennis family has run aground trying to follow the Williams template, which included a cradle-to-tour focus on greatness but also — extraordinarily — no junior tournaments after age 12.“Thousands of lives probably went down the wrong path trying to follow that,” said Rick Macci, the fast-talking coach who shaped the games of both Serena and Venus Williams in their youth under Richard’s watchful gaze. “That playbook only worked for the sisters because they were both so amazingly competitive that they maybe did not need to play junior tennis. Other kids need to compete to learn how to win and how to lose.Though the sisters will always be, in some manner, packaged together in the collective consciousness, it was Serena who grew up, as her father correctly predicted, to be the greater player.Serena would go on to win 23 Grand Slam singles titles (for now) to Venus’s seven, and to spend 319 weeks at No. 1 to Venus’s 11 weeks. Serena says she takes no joy in that disparity, emphasizing that she would never have scaled such heights without her sister’s high-flying example.Serena, right, and Venus Williams each reached the No. 1 ranking, Serena for 319 weeks and Venus for 11.Raymond McCrea Jones/The New York Times“Without Venus, there would be no Serena,” Serena once said.It would come as no surprise if Venus, 42, soon joined Serena in retirement at some stage after the U.S. Open or if they decided to call it a career together in New York. But for now, only Serena has made it plain that the end is truly nigh and that — to deploy her own rather endearing sneaker-dragging code for retirement — she is “evolving away from tennis.”She has certainly helped tennis evolve with point-winning power from all areas of the court; she has certainly helped society evolve with her willingness to change the dialogue about body image and strong women ferociously pursuing their goals. She has had the confidence to take risks, sometimes sartorial, like her French Open catsuit, and sometimes more profound, such as her decision to boycott the tournament in Indian Wells, Calif., after she was booed and her father said he heard racial slurs in 2001. Fourteen years later, she returned in the interest of bridging the divide and sending a message about second chances.But it is her tennis that has spoken loudest the longest. The sport, like many sports, remains fixated on the debate about the greatest of all time, and Williams certainly belongs in the heart of the conversation. It is easy to believe that she, at her best with the same equipment, would have beaten any woman at their best.But she was not nearly as consistent a winner in regular tour events as past women’s champions like Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert and Steffi Graf.Williams picked her spots, and her 73 tour singles titles rank her fifth on the Open Era career list. Navratilova won 167 singles titles and 177 doubles titles at a time when doubles was much more prestigious and widely played by the stars. Evert won 157 singles titles. Graf, who retired at 30 years old, won 107 and remained No. 1 for a record total of 377 weeks.Serena Williams joined Martina Navratilova, left, and Chris Evert in winning 18 Grand Slam singles titles after she won the 2014 U.S. Open.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesBut Serena, who has amassed a women’s record of $94.5 million in prize money, played at a time when the Grand Slam tournaments have become evermore the measuring stick of greatness and the focus of global interest and attention.To her evident frustration, she remains one short of the record of 24 major singles titles, held by Margaret Court, a net-charging Australian who played when Grand Slam tournament fields were smaller and the women’s game lacked the depth it possesses today.But comparing across eras remains a particularly tricky task in tennis (non-Australian greats of the past often skipped the Australian Open altogether). Perhaps it is wisest not to seek a definitive answer.“She’s the greatest player of her generation, no doubt,” Navratilova said.That brooks no argument, and though tennis generations have a way of getting compacted to just a few years, Williams’s greatness was genuinely true to the term. She is the only player to have won singles titles in the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s. Ten of her Grand Slam singles titles came after age 30: more than any other player. She also reached four major singles finals after giving birth to Olympia.“She was fresh at 30, a lot fresher than other players and champions in the past,” Navratilova said. “We would have played a lot more matches at that point. But the physical issues meant that she had taken a lot of breaks.”That enduring excellence — a tribute to Williams’s deep drive, phenomenal talent and innate belief in her own powers — will be a huge part of her legacy, no matter how far she advances in what is surely her final U.S. Open. More

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      Coco Gauff vs. Naomi Osaka Could Be a Rivalry in the Making

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      Gauff, 18, and Osaka, 24, played a cracker of a match Thursday night in San Jose, Calif., as they prepared for the U.S. Open.Maybe, some years in the future, if Coco Gauff goes on to fulfill the destiny that some have predicted for her, her win over Naomi Osaka, 6-4, 6-4, on Thursday night will serve as a torch-passing moment.Or maybe it will just be Chapter 4 in a rivalry that will stretch for decades. Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova played 80 matches during the 1970s and 1980s, 60 times in finals. Plenty of tennis fans are hoping for something like that from Gauff and Osaka, especially after Gauff’s nervy win in San Jose, Calif., at the Silicon Valley Classic, one of several tuneup tournaments for the U.S. Open.Gauff, who is still just 18 even though she seems like she has been around for a while now — because, well, she has been — surged to the lead, pounding her powerful serve, especially as she sealed the final game of the first set. She looked like she would cruise to the victory, building a 5-1 second-set lead. Osaka was serving at 0-40.But then Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam champion who is coming back from an Achilles injury she suffered in the spring, came alive. She saved four match points in that game and then three more over the next two as she closed the deficit to 5-4 before Gauff finally put the match away.“You know certain players, no matter what the score is, it’s going to be tough,” Gauff said afterward. “It’s Naomi. She could have easily threw in the towel, but she didn’t.”Gauff, 18, is still seeking a Grand Slam title.Godofredo A. Vásquez/Associated PressAfter it was over, Osaka said she had a realization during the match that for a long while now she has been letting people call her “mentally weak.”“I forgot who I was,” said Osaka, who is 24 and took several months off last year to address her mental health. “I feel like the pressure doesn’t beat me. I am the pressure.”There are plenty of professional tennis tournaments during the year that are eminently skippable for any number of reasons — low stakes, a lack of star power, not much money on the line. But this year’s Silicon Valley Classic has punched far above its weight. A stacked draw — top women could choose to play this week in steamy Washington, D.C., or temperate Northern California — has delivered matchups worthy of the later rounds of Grand Slam tournaments from the start.Gauff vs. Osaka was a round-of-16 match. Gauff, ranked 11th, was scheduled to play Friday night in the quarterfinals against the fourth-ranked Paula Badosa of Spain, the winner of last year’s BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif. It was a matchup Gauff was relishing for a number of reasons.“Tough players and playing high seeds like this in warm-up tournaments for the U.S. Open is what I ask for,” she said Thursday night.Gauff said she and Osaka felt the love from the fans in San Jose, Calif.Carmen Mandato/Getty ImagesBecause Gauff is still so young, her every match is both a singular sporting event and part of a larger process. She reached her first Grand Slam singles final at the French Open in June, where she lost to the world No. 1, Iga Swiatek of Poland. She fell in the third round at Wimbledon in a tough battle against Amanda Anisimova, another young rising American.Gauff said Thursday night that she had learned from the loss to Anisimova that even against a powerful baseliner she needed to remain aggressive and not assume the role of the counterpuncher. She spent the past three weeks training as long as eight hours a day in Florida to get ready for the summer hardcourt swing in North America. She said she felt the work paying off against Osaka, one of the game’s greatest baseliners.“I was winning the rallies more than she was,” she said of Osaka. “A lot more to go before the U.S. Open, but this is a good start for me.”At the same time, there were several moments on Thursday night when Gauff said she got a healthy reminder that she is about more than just wins and losses. Gauff and Osaka both regularly speak out on social issues, including human rights, gun violence and abortion rights. As they walked onto the court, the players saw a fan holding a sign that showed pictures of both of them and the words “Thanks for being you.”“Those kinds of messages are really important to us,” Gauff said. “It shows that people are not just supporting us because of our career but because of what we do off the court as well.”And for what it’s worth, Gauff and Osaka are now all even at two wins apiece. More