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      WNBA Upgrades to Charter Flights for Finals

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      For the first time ever, the W.N.B.A. is providing charter flights throughout the finals. Aces and Sun players are loving it — and hope it becomes permanent.UNCASVILLE, Conn. — There were “oohs and aahs” of excitement as the Connecticut Sun players entered their chartered plane on the way to Las Vegas for Game 1 of the W.N.B.A. finals, guard Nia Clouden said.Waiting for them were pillows and blankets, seats that fully reclined and a generous menu of complimentary food. Clouden typically never eats the roasted salted almonds, cookies, chips and other snacks offered on the team’s commercial flights. But on that night, she ordered a pepperoni pizza.Sun center Jonquel Jones pointed to the long legs that make up part of her 6-foot-6, 215-pound frame to show how the leg room on the charter flight made a difference for her. She usually tries to find the exit row seat on flights, but the space is never enough. Jones said she was also happy to avoid “all the unnecessary stuff that happens at airports.”“Sometimes after a game, you don’t really feel like talking, and you go to the airport and people want to talk about the game,” Jones said while laughing. “Or they want to ask you how tall you are — constantly — all the time. ‘How’s the weather up there?’ And it’s just like, dude, I’m just trying to get to the next destination.”She added: “As much as we love our fans — we appreciate them — sometimes it does really get a little exhausting, and it makes the season a little bit tougher.”This season, for the first time ever, the league agreed to provide charter travel throughout the W.N.B.A. finals. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has said that the league does not have enough revenue to cover travel for all teams during the regular season and playoffs, which she estimated would cost more than $20 million. Teams fly commercially during the season and playoffs, with rare exceptions for extreme travel difficulties.Athletes in major professional sports leagues like the N.F.L., N.B.A. and M.L.B., and even many men’s and women’s Division I athletes, have grown accustomed to charter travel. But those men’s leagues have been around much longer than the W.N.B.A. and have billions of dollars of revenue, while the women’s league regularly operates at a loss.The W.N.B.A. hasn’t committed to offering charter flights for next year’s finals or expanding them to the regular season or any other part of the playoffs. Engelbert said the league was able to provide charters for the finals because of its efforts to increase revenue.“As we focus on growing this league by adding more corporate partners, increasing media exposure and disrupting the outdated media rights valuations of women’s sports,” Engelbert said in a statement, “it would be our hope to continue offering these opportunities when possible.”More on the W.N.B.A.Swan Song: Sue Bird, who had said she would retire after this season, shepherded the Seattle Storm to the playoffs. The team’s loss on Sept. 7 marked the end of her incredible career.Greatness Overshadowed: Sylvia Fowles, who has also announced her retirement from basketball, is one of the most successful American athletes ever. Why isn’t she better known?A Critical Eye: As enthusiasm for women’s basketball and the W.N.B.A grows, fans are becoming more demanding of the league and more vocal about their wishes.Making the Style Rules: Players in women’s basketball are styling themselves before the games. Their choices are an expression of their freedom, and can be lucrative too.The W.N.B.A.’s collective bargaining agreement with the players’ union prohibits teams from chartering flights without league approval. The Liberty were fined $500,000 for secretly traveling to several games by charter last season.So players fly commercially, dealing with the delays, Covid risks and the many flight challenges that everyday customers also deal with. If you’re wondering why professional athletes should have different travel standards anyway, many W.N.B.A. players said it started with rest.Having a relaxing night’s sleep is paramount for playing in a 36-game regular season — with half of those games on the road — when a player’s future salary and place in the league depend on their performance each night, players said. Rest can be especially challenging on a commercial flight for the tall humans that occupy women’s basketball teams. But more important, delays and flight cancellations can result in teams’ having to forfeit games.The Aces forfeited a game in 2018 after dealing with over 25 hours of delays and layovers on their way to Washington, D.C., to play the Mystics. They arrived just four hours ahead of their game. The Aces cited health concerns as the reason not to play and were the first team in league history to forfeit a game. Las Vegas missed the playoffs, finishing one game behind the Dallas Wings.“I definitely think having charters is a trickle-down effect to people being able to take care of their bodies better and rest,” Aces guard Sydney Colson said. “And then you have better games to watch because people are rested and injury free.”Connecticut’s Jonquel Jones said though she loved the Sun’s fans, it can be challenging running into them at the airport after games when players might not feel like talking.Joe Buglewicz for The New York TimesFor those players who played college basketball for major programs in the United States, the special finals travel is a welcome return to the norm, as many of their schools provided charter flights to all games.“There aren’t many times that I can remember at all that we flew commercial,” said Aces forward Theresa Plaisance, who played at Louisiana State University. “And when you get to the W.N.B.A., and you’re going to your middle seat on Southwest — sometimes it’s really hard to swallow that pill and think like: ‘Oh, this is my progression. I went from college to make it to a professional league, and I have to go backward.’”For Peter Feeney, the basketball operations manager for the Sun, who has handled all flight logistics for the past four years, the simplicity of the travel blew his mind, he said. Feeney typically arrives at airports an hour before the team to ensure that they can pass through security without any hiccups. But on their two charter flights, they’ve arrived at the plane less than an hour before takeoff, and the flight staff handled almost everything.The moment made Feeney realize that if the league switched to charter flights for the entire season, he would become less useful in his role. But he also serves as a video coordinator, so he welcomes the idea. “That’s a good problem, right?” he said with a laugh.Aces forward A’ja Wilson, who has been outspoken about the W.N.B.A.’s travel woes, said that the players had talked about what life would be like if chartered flights were normal after they comfortably made the cross-country trip to Connecticut from Las Vegas for Game 3 on Thursday.“We need it. Ain’t nothing else,” Wilson said. “We need to be able to fly like that after every game. I can only imagine how my body would feel if we did. So, I think it’s a huge deal for us to do it. We need to continue to push it.” More

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      Seattle Storm’s Sue Bird Ends WNBA Career With Playoff Loss

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      Bird, 41, the Seattle Storm guard, had said she would retire after this season. The Storm fell to the Las Vegas Aces in the W.N.B.A. semifinals on Tuesday.Seattle Storm fans wanted one more year. Sue Bird gave it to them.She slicked back her signature ponytail, laced up her custom Nike sneakers and added to her legend with a farewell tour.When the Storm set a W.N.B.A. single-game assists record for the regular season with 37, eight of them were hers. She stretched her formidable margin as the league’s career leader in assists and inched higher on the steals and 3-point lists. She helped the Storm make the playoffs for the 16th time in the 19 seasons she played.And then she was done.The Las Vegas Aces beat the Storm, 97-92, in Game 4 of their semifinal series on Tuesday to advance to the W.N.B.A. finals. For Bird, 41, who had said in June that she would retire after the season, the loss on her home court marked the end of an incredible career. As fans cheered and chanted “Thank you, Sue,” Bird stood on the court and cried.At a postgame news conference, Bird said that she hadn’t wanted to leave the court so that she could “soak it all in.” She started to cry again. “I know the tears don’t look like happy tears, but there’s a lot of happiness,” she said.Bird retires as the W.N.B.A.’s career leader in assists and games played. She had 8 points and 8 assists against the Aces on Tuesday.Lindsey Wasson/Associated PressAces Coach Becky Hammon said it was “bittersweet” to have defeated Bird to end her “fairy-tale” career. Bird had 8 points and 8 assists in the loss.“I kind of feel like the girl that beat Serena,” Hammon said, referring to Ajla Tomljanovic, who beat Serena Williams in her final match at the U.S. Open last week. Williams had said she planned to retire after the tournament.Storm Coach Noelle Quinn, who also played with Bird in Seattle, called Bird “the best point guard to ever play this game.”Bird won four championships with Seattle, the last in 2020. That season showcased the traits that have come to define her: resilience and keen court vision. She missed half of the regular season with injuries. But she proved invaluable during Seattle’s six postseason games. Seattle never lost during that playoff run. Bird set a then-W.N.B.A. record for assists in a playoff game with 16 in Game 1 of the finals against the Aces. Then she had a double-double — 16 points and 10 assists — in Game 2. In the series-clinching Game 3, Bird spent the end of the fourth quarter on the bench laughing with forward Breanna Stewart. The Storm won by 33.“The fact that I’m sitting here, I think I’m having this, like, in-shock moment, because it doesn’t really feel real that we just won and that I was able to contribute in the way that I did,” she said afterward.Much of Bird’s 21-year career has come as a surprise, if only because there wasn’t enough time for someone to accomplish such feats before her. “I really didn’t know what to dream,” Bird told The New York Times last month, “and so to sit here now with all the championships I have, I just feel really satisfied.”The Storm drafted her No. 1 overall in 2002 out of UConn before the W.N.B.A.’s sixth season. She immediately became Seattle’s franchise leader in assists, with 191 that year. She came in second for the Rookie of the Year Award, but she and the player who beat her — Indiana’s Tamika Catchings — became the first rookies ever named to the All-W.N.B.A. first team.Fans celebrated Bird with signs and T-shirts all season.Steph Chambers/Getty ImagesAmong parting gifts Bird received was this jacket from the Minnesota Lynx’s Sylvia Fowles, who also retired this season.David Berding/Getty ImagesOver the next 20 years, Bird would pile up honors, including a record 13 W.N.B.A. All-Star selections and five Olympic gold medals with the United States. Last year, she was voted to the W25, the W.N.B.A.’s list of the top 25 players ever as the league celebrated its 25th anniversary.“These athletes have played the game at the highest level on the court — they are scorers and rebounders, assist makers and defensive stoppers, leaders and mentors,” W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in announcing the W25. She added, “Together, they have transformed the way the game is played, changed the way athletes are viewed, become incredible role models and inspired generations of young, diverse athletes.”Bird, who is engaged to the women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe, is one of the most visible gay professional athletes. For most of the W.N.B.A.’s history, its most prominent stars were not openly gay, and players have said that they felt pressured to conform to heterosexual standards of femininity. But Bird is among a wave of stars — including Brittney Griner, Seimone Augustus, Elena Delle Donne and Diana Taurasi — who have been open about their sexuality and spoken about L.G.B.T.Q. rights and acceptance.Bird has also used her platform as one of the league’s biggest stars to support social justice causes, especially regarding Black women. And as the W.N.B.A. continues to push for the release of Griner, who has been detained in Russia on drug charges since February, Bird has been vocal.“We all feel rattled by this and just want her home,” Bird said at a news conference with Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, in July.Bird wearing custom Nike sneakers from the signature line of the N.B.A. star Kyrie Irving.Steph Chambers/Getty ImagesBird’s off-the-court influence has gone beyond politics to style. She is known for her love of sneakers, and her custom Nikes — from the signature line of the N.B.A. star Kyrie Irving — have “Keep Sue Fresh” printed on them each night.But the core of Bird’s legacy is on the court.“That’s a legendary player right there,” said Aces guard Chelsea Gray, who scored 31 points and fueled Las Vegas’s victory in Bird’s final game.Stewart, who had 42 points in Game 4 for Seattle, said that knowing it would be her last game with Bird was more “devastating” than losing.“That’s what hurts the most,” she said, adding that Bird had been a mentor and friend.Storm guard Jewell Loyd said the Game 4 loss was “obviously not how we wanted to finish for her.”Loyd added, “We’ve been very fortunate to play with a generational player like Sue.”Bird said though her body felt good, she was not having second thoughts about retiring. But she will miss basketball.“There’s going to be nothing like this,” she said.Bird gave fans someone to believe in until the end. Her final points in the W.N.B.A. came on a layup with 21.8 seconds to go on Tuesday and Seattle down by 6. It was reminiscent of a play on Sunday, in Game 3. The Storm turned to her when they were down by 1 point with less than two seconds to go. She sank a 3-pointer and held her follow-through, as her teammates went wild around her. Seattle would lose to the Aces in overtime, but that play was what this final season was for.One more chance to celebrate. One last moment with Bird.Bird hit a 3-pointer in Game 3 of the W.N.B.A. semifinals against the Aces, giving the Storm a 2-point lead with less than two seconds to go.Lindsey Wasson/Associated Press More

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      Serena Williams Willed Her Way to a Glorious Goodbye

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      Her last match — at the U.S. Open and probably of her career — was a gutsy display of the power and resilience that have kept fans cheering for nearly 30 years.It was match point, which Serena Williams had faced many times before. It was career point, which was startlingly new territory for one of the greatest athletes of any era.But Williams, on this night like no other at the U.S. Open, remained true to herself and her competitive spirit on Friday, with the end of her 27-year run as a professional tennis player suddenly becoming very real.Yes, Ajla Tomljanovic was about to serve for a place in the fourth round, at 40-30 with a 5-1 lead in the third set. But Williams, clearly weary after nearly three hours of corner-to-corner tennis, was not yet prepared to accept what looked inevitable.She saved one match point with a swinging backhand volley. She saved a second with a cocksure forehand approach that Tomljanovic could not handle. She saved a third with a clean forehand return winner that had fans in the sold-out Arthur Ashe Stadium shouting: “Not yet! Not yet!”“I’ve been down before,” Williams said later. “I think in my career I’ve never given up. In matches, I don’t give up. Definitely wasn’t giving up tonight.”She saved a fourth match point. She saved a fifth, and by now it was clear, as the winners and bellows and clenched fists kept coming, that Williams would get a fitting finish.A record-tying 24th Grand Slam singles title in her farewell tournament at age 40 was always going to be a long shot. An inspiring last dance was no guarantee, either, given all the matches and miles in her legs and all the rust on her game in recent weeks.But she salvaged it in New York. She conjured it with all of her pride, power and sheer will. She found a familiar gear in the second set of her opening-round victory over Danka Kovinic. And she stayed in that groove as she defeated the No. 2 seed Anett Kontaveit in the next round before coming up against Tomljanovic, a tall and elegant baseliner who represents Australia but lives in Florida, and who was born and raised in Croatia.A capacity crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium roared for Williams throughout Friday night’s match. Karsten Moran for The New York TimesBarring a major change of heart from her much more famous opponent, Tomljanovic will be the answer to the trivia question “Who was the last player to face Serena Williams in an official match?”But while Williams could not fend off the sixth career point, striking a low forehand into the net, she did strike a much more appropriate final note at Flushing Meadows than if she had chosen to forgo this final comeback.At last year’s Wimbledon, she retired with a leg injury before the first set of her first-round match was done, crying as she hobbled off the Center Court grass where she had won so often.Serena Williams at the U.S. OpenThe U.S. Open was very likely the tennis star’s last professional tournament after a long career of breaking boundaries and obliterating expectations.Glorious Goodbye: Even as Serena Williams faced career point, she put on a gutsy display of the power and resilience that have kept fans cheering for nearly 30 years.The Magic Ends: Zoom into this composite photo to see details of Williams’s final moment on Ashe Stadium at this U.S. Open.Her Fans: We asked readers to share their memories of watching Williams play and the emotions that she stirred. There was no shortage of submissions.Sisterhood on the Court: Since Williams and her sister Venus burst onto the tennis scene in the 1990s, their legacies have been tied to each other’s.She was 39 then and took nearly another year to return to competition. But as the tears came for a different reason on Friday night on court in her post-match interview, and then again in her news conference, it was evident that she had gotten a measure of what she was searching for by returning to play.She gave herself a suitably grand stage to thank her fans and her family, including her parents, Richard Williams and Oracene Price, and her big sister, Venus Williams, who was watching from the players box just as she did when Serena won the family’s first Grand Slam singles title at the U.S. Open in 1999. They went on to win 29 more, Serena finishing with 23 and Venus, though not yet retired, almost certainly finishing with the seven she has now.“I wouldn’t be Serena if there wasn’t Venus, so thank you, Venus,” Serena said. “She’s the only reason that Serena Williams ever existed.”Though Williams was still struggling to use the word “retirement” herself on Friday, the WTA Tour was not as it congratulated Williams on a grand career. Nor did Williams give herself much wiggle room when asked what it might take to bring her back for more.“I’m not thinking about that; I always did love Australia, though,” she said with a smile, referring to the next Grand Slam tournament on the calendar: the Australian Open in January.But that sounded much more playful than serious, and she soon turned reflective, talking about motherhood and life away from competition, which she has already experienced at length during the coronavirus pandemic and in her latest year away from tennis.“It takes a lot of work to get here,” she said of the U.S. Open. “Clearly, I’m still capable. It takes a lot more than that. I’m ready to, like, be a mom, explore a different version of Serena. Technically, in the world, I’m still super young, so I want to have a little bit of a life while I’m still walking.”It is Williams’s call, of course (of course!), but it seems the right choice and the right time. Though she is correct that her level was often remarkably and surprisingly high this week, it is also true that the last time she lost this early in singles at the U.S. Open was in her first Open appearance in singles in 1998.Tomljanovic did herself proud on Friday, effectively countering Williams’s signature power and handling the deeply partisan and sometimes unsportsmanlike crowd with great composure and dignity. Fans cheered for Tomljanovic’s missed serves and errors, and with the match in its final stages, some shouted “Serena!” in the midst of her service motion.She said she borrowed a trick from Novak Djokovic, who won the 2015 U.S. Open men’s singles final against Roger Federer in a very pro-Federer atmosphere by, he said, imagining that they were cheering “Novak” instead of “Roger.”Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia proved a formidable challenger for Williams. She won the final six games of the match.Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times“I mean, I used that,” Tomljanovic said. “And I also, just, really blocked it out as much as I could. It did get to me a few times, internally. I didn’t take it personally because, I mean, I would be cheering for Serena, too, if I wasn’t playing her. But it was definitely not easy.”Tomljanovic gathered herself impressively after Williams seized the second set in a tiebreaker and then broke Tomljanovic’s serve in the opening game of the third set. Tomljanovic also graciously and respectfully hit all the right notes in her on-court interview, even though she had been reluctant to follow Williams to the microphone.“I have known Ajla since she was 12 years old, and I have never been prouder of her,” said Chris Evert, the former No. 1 who has been a mentor to Tomljanovic but watched the match from afar, in Aspen, Colo., where one of her sons was to be married on Saturday.Tomljanovic’s victory will certainly provide premium content for Netflix, which has been following her and several other players closely all season as it films the tennis version of “Formula 1: Drive to Survive,” its behind-the-scenes automobile racing series.But Tomljanovic, who swept the last six games of what is almost certain to be Williams’s final match, is also an unseeded 29-year-old veteran who has never been ranked in the top 30 in the world and has yet to advance past the quarterfinals in a major tournament. That she had the tools to stand toe-to-toe with Williams and prevail is one more hint that Williams’s time at the top of the game has truly passed.What was also clear on Friday as the match extended well past two hours and into a third set was that Williams’s stamina and speed were fading. That is understandable with her lack of match play in recent months and in light of all the physical and emotional energy she was absorbing and expending with the public roaring her on. She also had played an intense doubles match the night before in Ashe Stadium, losing in two close sets with Venus.But understandable does not negate the reality that she looked late to the ball, and often nowhere near the ball, as Tomljanovic broke up baseline rallies by firing winners to break her for a 5-1 lead.It looked, just for a moment, as if Williams, one of the most ferocious competitors in tennis history, would have a sotto voce finish.Instead, she dug in and dug deep, drawing strength from past revivals and again showing no fear of swinging for the lines with a Grand Slam match at stake.Should we really have been surprised?As the points and great escapes piled up, Pam Shriver, the ESPN analyst sitting courtside, turned to those of us in the same row and said wide-eyed, “There should be a documentary just about this game.”Not a bad call, but perhaps better to make it the final act of a documentary about this week, when Williams shook off the rust for three final rounds and gave the crowds and all those who have followed her for nearly three decades, through triumphs and setbacks, an extended reminder of what made her great. 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      In Comebacks, Serena Williams Showed ‘You Can Never Underestimate Her’

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      Big moments on the biggest stages cemented Williams’s reputation as the queen of comebacks.During the 2012 U.S. Open final, Serena Williams was so close to losing that the idea of a comeback seemed out of the question.Her opponent, Victoria Azarenka, had gone up 5-3 in the final set, giving her numerous ways to put Williams away.“I was preparing my runners-up speech,” Williams said.Instead, she delivered what became a signature comeback of her career, breaking Azarenka’s serve twice and winning the championship without losing another game.The significance of that victory went beyond the title itself, as it turned around a year in which she had lost in the first round of the French Open. And as Williams comes close to retiring, that win illustrates how many fans will remember her tennis career — Williams coming back time and again under difficult circumstances.Here are some of the moments that helped Williams build that reputation.Australian Open, 2007Dean Treml/Agence France-Presse – Getty ImagesAfter struggling with a knee injury for much of 2006, Williams went into the 2007 Australian Open unseeded and ranked No. 81. But she went on to win the tournament, defeating Maria Sharapova.“She goes months without playing a match, loses in a tuneup and then runs the table,” Jon Wertheim, a Tennis Channel commentator and author, said.Pam Shriver, an ESPN tennis analyst, said that Williams entered the Australian Open that year in poor shape, but that by the end of the tournament, “she almost looked like a different player.”“That was one of the most memorable comebacks that I can remember that resulted in a major championship,” Shriver said.After the match, Sharapova said to the crowd in Rod Laver Arena that “you can never underestimate her as an opponent.”“I don’t think many of you expected her to be in the final, but I definitely did,” Sharapova said.2011 Health ScareChris Trotman/Getty ImagesIn February 2011, Williams was hospitalized with a pulmonary embolism. Williams recovered in time to play Wimbledon, and later revealed the seriousness of her health scare.“I was literally on my deathbed at one point,” Williams said at the time. The circumstances, she said, changed her perspective, and she went into Wimbledon that year with “nothing to lose.”Serena Williams’s Farewell to TennisThe U.S. Open could be the tennis star’s last professional tournament after a long career of breaking boundaries and obliterating expectations.Decades of Greatness: Over 27 years, Serena Williams dominated generation after generation of opponents and changed the way women’s tennis is played, winning 23 Grand Slam singles titles and cementing her reputation as the queen of comebacks.Is She the GOAT?: Proclaiming Williams the greatest women’s tennis player of all time is not a straightforward debate, our columnist writes.An Enduring Influence: From former and current players’ memories of a young Williams to the new fans she drew to tennis, Williams left a lasting impression.Her Fashion: Since she turned professional in 1995, Williams has used her clothes as a statement of self and a weapon of change.Williams made it to the round of 16. Then, she won her next two tournaments, the Bank of the West Classic in California and the Rogers Cup in Canada. She finished her year by reaching the U.S. Open final, where she lost to Samantha Stosur.“That comeback was unbelievable,” Shriver said. “No matter the score, no matter whatever, she still thought she could win.”2012 Summer RunDoug Mills/The New York TimesWilliams was eliminated from the 2012 Australian Open in the round of 16, and she was upset at that year’s French Open, where she was knocked out in the first round.“When she lost in the French Open in the first round, the career buzzards came circling,” Wertheim said. “There were plenty of times her career was supposed to be over, and she came back. The obvious one is 2012.”Williams responded to the losses by training under a new coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, who went on to work with her for the next decade.And after that French Open, Williams went on a streak. She won Wimbledon before taking the gold medals in women’s singles and doubles at the London Olympics, and then she delivered her win against Azarenka at the U.S. Open, “playing some of the most inspiring tennis of her career,” Wertheim said.French Open, 2015Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesAt the French Open in 2015, Williams lost the first set of three consecutive matches. Each time, she came back to win in three sets.“Opponents were points away from eliminating her, and Serena simply refused to go off the court anything other than the winner,” Wertheim said.Williams went on to win the semifinal while dealing with a bout of the flu.The day after the semifinal, still sick, Williams said she briefly thought about withdrawing from the final.“Out of 10 — a 10 being like take me to the hospital — I went from like a 6 to a 12 in a matter of two hours,” she said at the time. “I was just miserable. I was literally in my bed shaking, and I was just shaking, and I just started thinking positive.”Williams won the final for her 20th major singles title.Pregnancy ComebackClive Mason/Getty ImagesIn 2017, Williams surprised the tennis world when she shared that she had won that year’s Australian Open while she was close to two months pregnant.Williams missed the rest of the 2017 tennis season, and had another major health scare after she gave birth to her daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian. Williams was bedridden for her six weeks after she had blood clots in her lungs. Severe coughing caused her cesarean section wound to open. And doctors found a large hematoma, a collection of blood outside the blood vessels, in her abdomen.She returned to tennis in 2018, when she reached the Wimbledon final (where she lost to Angelique Kerber) and the U.S. Open final (where she lost to Naomi Osaka). The following year, she reached the Wimbledon final (losing to Simona Halep) and the U.S. Open final again (losing to Bianca Andreescu).“To have a child in the north half of your 30s and reach four major finals is an extraordinary feat that hasn’t gotten the full due,” Wertheim said.The Farewell ComebackHiroko Masuike/The New York TimesWilliams was forced to withdraw early in her first-round Wimbledon match last year because of an injury. She was given a standing ovation as she walked off the court in tears, as many began to wonder whether it would be the last time Williams would appear at the All England Club.She returned to Centre Court at Wimbledon this year but was defeated in the first round. She continued to struggle after that, losing early in the tournaments she has entered. At the National Bank Open in Toronto, Coco Gauff said that she was moved by how Williams has continued playing and “giving it her all.”“There’s nothing else she needs to give us in the game,” Gauff told reporters. “I just love that.”Williams will attempt one more comeback at this year’s U.S. Open. Along with her singles draw, she will also play in the women’s doubles tournament, partnered with her sister Venus. While we wait to see how this comeback takes shape, one certainty, Shriver said, is that Williams will be playing with the support of her fans.“The crowd is going to be crazy,” Shriver said. “I think the noise on a Serena win will be some of the loudest noise we’ve ever heard at the U.S. Open.” More

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      Serena Williams Always Made a Strong First Impression

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      Long before Williams won 23 Grand Slam singles titles, she was turning heads. Countless memories fade, but not, it seems, when Williams was involved.From the time she was a young girl until this month, when she announced the approaching end of her tennis career on the cover of the September issue of Vogue, Serena Williams has always made a strong impression.Ask people around tennis about their first encounter with Williams or their first glimpse of her, and almost invariably they respond with a memory so crisp and detailed that the moment might as well have happened last week.Billie Jean King, the tennis icon and founder of the WTA, said in her 2021 autobiography “All In” that she first met a 6-year-old Williams and her 7-year-old sister, Venus, in April 1988 at a tennis clinic in Long Beach, Calif.“Their mother, Oracene, told me that day that she and her husband, Richard, taught the girls to play and they all came to the clinic from their home in Compton to pick up some pointers,” King said. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow,’ these girls have the ability to be the very best.”Former and current tennis players and others who knew a young Serena Williams shared with The New York Times their first impression of her before she became a worldwide star by winning 23 Grand Slam singles championships.The interviews have been edited for clarity and length.Alexandra StevensonFormer professional tennis player, ESPN U.S. Open analyst and Williams’s friend for more than 30 yearsIt was Morley Field in San Diego. My mom was a reporter covering a girl who was supposed to be a phenom at 10 years old. That was Venus Williams. I liked her name. I was 9. I wasn’t playing tournaments yet. This was a local San Diego tournament, and Venus was in the finals. It was easy to spot her father, Richard, and the family. They were the only Black people in a mostly white and Asian environment, standing off to the side.The younger girls were playing a hand game. They looked fun to me. I had been going to jump-rope school, and I had two ropes with me. I was hoping to find kids for double Dutch while my mom worked. Venus and Serena were with their older sisters Isha and Lyndrea.“Can you jump?” I asked Venus, the taller one with braids sticking out all over her head. The beads, I guess, would come later.“I can jump,” she said.Venus decided that Lyndrea and Isha would turn the ropes. Venus said, “She jumps first,” and pushed Serena into the ropes.I laughed and jumped in with Serena. We jumped and jumped. No one missed.That’s how it always was for us. We were always together giggling, telling stories.Pam ShriverFormer Grand Slam doubles championI was at one of Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No to Drugs” events at the Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles. Serena and Venus were 9 and 10 and playing in the charity event. Serena was little then, but then they came to Baltimore to play my charity event and played against the Ripken brothers.Venus, left, and Serena Williams, second from right, with President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, in 1990.AllsportWhen they came to Baltimore, I invited Venus and Richard and Serena to stay and help me prepare for my next tournament. Serena was a little young, but I remember her power at maybe 12 years old, and that has been the heart of her career. She had that live, powerful arm, and the first time I saw that serve, I could tell she had the smoothest, most efficient and powerful service motion ever.Rick MacciTennis coach who brought the Williams family to FloridaIt was in 1991 when I went to Compton, Calif. Richard called me. He knew I had worked with Jennifer Capriati. He told me I wanted to come to Compton to see his girls. He said, “I promise you won’t get shot.”We went to a park, and there were people playing basketball and people passed out on the grass when we got out of the van.Everyone said: “Hey, Venus. Hey, Meek,” because that is what they called Serena. Richard pulled out this old cart of old balls and said he liked using old dead balls because he wanted the girls running and digging them out of the ground.The first hour was a train wreck, and I didn’t see anything, but you don’t judge a book by its cover. We started playing competitive points. Me and Venus against Serena. Once we started that, the footwork got a lot better. There was a rage inside these two little kids once we kept score. They ran so fast they almost fell down. I said, “You’ve got the next female Michael Jordan,” referring to Venus, because she was older and better then. Richard said, “I got the next two.”Mary CarilloTennis commentator and 1977 French Open mixed doubles championMy first true memories of Serena’s greatness are from 1999, when she played dizzyingly good hardcourt tennis at Indian Wells, then Miami. The beads. Those beads were so damn cool. She looked locked in and fearless, beating Steffi Graf in the Indian Wells final and Martina Hingis in Miami. Then, she faced Venus in the Miami final. Venus got that one.It was an awkward, uncomfortable thing for them to play one another and for me to call, but by the end of that summer, at the U.S. Open, sweet Jesus. I’m not sure there could have been a tougher draw than the one she got through. Oh, and did I mention the beads?Williams announced the approaching end of her tennis career on the cover of the September issue of Vogue.Mike Nelson/Agence France-Presse-Getty ImagesMartin BlackmanFormer professional tennis player and the general manager of player development for the United States Tennis AssociationIt was a match against Irina Spirlea at the U.S. Open in 1998.The skill, the poise, the power and willingness to finish forward with swinging volleys or regular volleys at the net. And, of course, her serve. My impression was: “She’s going to be great!”Kevin Garnett15-time N.B.A. All-Star, Olympic gold medalist and tennis fanI first met her in 1995. I was on Oprah Winfrey’s show with Venus, a show about athletes with potential. I don’t think Serena was actually on the show, but I met her backstage and we spoke.Then when she started playing, I just remember my sisters and my cousins didn’t care at all about tennis, and then as soon as we all saw Serena, suddenly all they wanted to do was play.For me, still, every time I think of her, it’s her walking onto the court for the first time in that catsuit, the black Puma catsuit.John McEnroeSeven-time Grand Slam singles champion and tennis commentatorIt wasn’t totally accurately portrayed in the movie “King Richard.”I first met her when she was 8 years old, when she was brought to the court I was practicing on and then being told by my then-coach, Paul Cohen, and Richard Williams that her and Venus were going to be the two best players in the world. It was like, call me in 10 years, we’ll see what’s happening.I didn’t walk away in disgust, or refuse to see Serena. That’s all I’m saying. I was there. Saw them. Why would I walk away after being told that I’m going to see two kids, 8 and 9, that are going to be future No. 1s? Like, I refuse to see these kids? For what? Because I’m a hothead? But that’s not correct.Chris Evert18-time Grand Slam singles championShe played in my first celebrity tournament. I had a celebrity event that was the fight against drug abuse and prevention of drug abuse. And she and Venus were living down here in Florida.From left: Chris Evert, Serena Williams, Tracy Austin and Venus Williams at the 1992 Chris Evert Pro Celebrity Tennis Classic.Art Seitz/Gamma-Rapho via Getty ImagesThe first thing that strikes anybody is the power, the power in their games. The athleticism, the relaxed athleticism that they have and the way they move. Twelve and 13 years old, and they weren’t afraid to go to the net and volley. They had such an advanced game for that age. It was a different kind of a game than any juniors that I had ever seen. And they were very happy. Very happy. They were enjoying the attention, and they were enjoying going out there and playing tennis.Daniil MedvedevWorld No. 1 men’s tennis playerI’ve actually never hit with her, but I remember watching her on television as a kid. This was back when Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were winning everything, and she was just like them. It seemed like she was absolutely crushing everyone she played.I know she lost matches. Everyone can lose matches, but I remember with Serena you had to watch from the beginning if you wanted to see her because it always seemed like it was 6-2, 6-2 and over in 45 minutes.

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      in Soccer

      The Women Who Finally Got Their Chance to Play Soccer

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      Many players, particularly those in divisions for athletes over 60, are discovering the sport anew after growing up in a world before Title IX, the landmark gender equality legislation that opened doors to athletics for women and girls.

      Before Title IX’s passage in 1972, and in the years immediately after, girls’ sports were mostly limited to gym classes or playing on boys’ teams, if they were even allowed. More

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      in Golf

      PGA Stars Seek ‘Some Sort of Unity’ With LIV After Meeting With Tiger Woods

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      Adding to the drama, the LIV golfer Patrick Reed filed a defamation lawsuit against Golf Channel and the commentator Brandel Chamblee, seeking $750 million in damages.PGA Tour stars, including Tiger Woods, met on Tuesday to grapple with the LIV Golf series, which has lured away tour players with staggering sums of money, and emerged feeling positive but unwilling to detail how they planned to fend off the rebel golf start-up or live somewhat peacefully alongside it.The meeting was the latest turn in what has been an uncharacteristically antagonistic year in golf, and it came just a week after a federal judge ruled that the PGA Tour can bar LIV golfers from the FedEx Cup playoffs, which conclude at the end of August.Ahead of the BMW Championship, PGA Tour players on Wednesday were reluctant to share specifics about the meeting, held in Wilmington, Del., that attracted Woods, who flew in from his home in Florida to attend. Rory McIlroy, the world No. 3, described the meeting to reporters on Wednesday as “impactful.”McIlroy said Woods’s leadership at the meeting was crucial as players discussed how to improve the PGA Tour and contend with the rift in the golf world since the emergence of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Invitational series. (The PGA Tour announced in June that it would suspend players who joined the LIV series.)“His role is navigating us to a place where we all think we should be,” McIlroy said of Woods’s presence. “He is the hero that we’ve all looked up to. His voice carries further than anyone else’s in the game of golf.”While players were quick to praise Woods, they demurred when it came to sharing any actionable steps that came from the meeting.“What’s the short-term? What’s the medium-term? What’s the long-term?” McIlroy said. “That’s something that we have to figure out.”Xander Schauffele told reporters on Wednesday that he wanted to see a resolution that ended in “some sort of unity.”“It was a really nice meeting. It was great. It was exciting. It was new. It was fresh,” Schauffele said. “I am very hopeful with what’s to come.”Schauffele, the world No. 6, told reporters there was “a little bit of a code” to keep quiet.“I think I’d be pretty unhappy if I saw one of those guys from last night just blabbering to you guys what we talked about,” Schauffele said. “That would be really frowned upon, and you probably wouldn’t get invited back to the meeting.”Justin Thomas, the world No. 7, said at a news conference that the meeting was “productive” and that the players who attended “just want the best for the tour and want what’s in the best interest.”“I’d just hope for a better product,” Thomas said. “I think that’s the hope in general of anything, is just to try to improve ourselves, where we’re playing, everything the best that we can.”Thomas said that having Woods present gave the meeting added credibility.“I think if someone like him is passionate about it, no offense to all of us, but that’s really all that matters,” Thomas said. “If he’s not behind something, then, one, it’s probably not a good idea in terms of the betterment of the game, but, two, it’s just not going to work. He needs to be behind something.”McIlroy said that in addition to dealing with LIV Golf, the PGA Tour would also eventually have to handle a world without Woods on the tour.“The tour had an easy job for 20 years,” McIlroy said. “They’ve got a bunch of us, and we’re all great players. But we’re not Tiger Woods.”Adding to Tuesday’s drama, Patrick Reed, the winner of the 2018 Masters who joined LIV Golf in June, filed a defamation lawsuit against Golf Channel and the commentator Brandel Chamblee, seeking $750 million in damages.The lawsuit, which was filed in a federal court in Texas, claims that the network and Chamblee have conspired with the PGA Tour to defame LIV players “with the intention to destroy them and their families professionally and personally” and eliminate LIV Golf as a competitor.According to the lawsuit, Golf Channel, Chamblee and the PGA Tour have conspired since Reed was 23, about nine years ago, “to destroy his reputation, create hate, and a hostile work environment for him, and with the intention to discredit his name and accomplishments.”For Chamblee and Golf Channel, “it does not matter how badly they destroy someone’s name and life, so long as they rake in more dollars and profit,” the lawsuit said.Larry Klayman, a lawyer for Reed, said that “we are confident of prevailing in court,” adding that “it’s a very strong complaint.”“While Chamblee’s and NBC’s Golf Channel’s never-ending defamation with regard to Mr. Reed, as set forth in the complaint is not new, with his joining of LIV Golf, it has reached new, intolerable heights,” Klayman said in a statement.Lawyers for Golf Channel and Chamblee could not be reached.The LIV Tour, which is financed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, has drawn much attention and criticism in recent months. Among those who have left the PGA Tour for LIV Golf are Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Phil Mickelson. Mickelson sparked outrage in February when it was reported that he had said that the LIV series was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” even as he called Saudi Arabia’s record on human rights “horrible.”Mickelson, who is reported to have received as much as $200 million to sign with the breakaway tour, is among 11 golfers who defected from the PGA Tour and then filed an antitrust lawsuit earlier this month against the PGA Tour, seeking to challenge its suspensions and other measures that have been used to discipline players who have joined LIV Golf. 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