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      Serena Williams Fans Flock to the First Match of Her Final US Open

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      A star-studded crowd inside Arthur Ashe Stadium was joined by throngs of fans outside during Williams’s first-round U.S. Open match.The public address system went quiet, and a pause ensued as people strained toward the player tunnel to get their first peek of the champion everyone had been waiting for.Serena Williams, dressed in a sparkling jacket with a cape flowing from her waist, walked out to ear-shattering applause as her daughter, Olympia, joined thousands of fans pointing cameras at her mom in the middle of Arthur Ashe Stadium.An announcer introduced her as “the greatest of all time,” and a record-setting U.S. Open crowd of 29,402 roared in agreement.Williams, despite the shattering noise, maintained her focus as she walked purposefully to her seat and began preparing for the spectacle ahead — the first match in what is expected to be Williams’s last U.S. Open, her last major tournament.“The crowd was crazy,” Williams said in an on-court ceremony to honor her afterward. “It really helped pull me through.”The night had the same kind of electric feel to it as so many other highly anticipated and buzzworthy tennis events before it, from Billie Jean King’s bedazzling grudge match with Bobby Riggs to Pete Sampras’s U.S. Open final against Andre Agassi. But even those may not have been quite as deafening.“I think when I walked out, the reception was really overwhelming,” Williams said. “It was loud, and I could feel it in my chest. It was a really good feeling. It’s a feeling I’ll never forget … Yeah, that meant a lot to me.”A host of celebrities — including a former president of the United States, a one-time heavyweight boxing champion of the world and many former tennis greats, like King and Martina Navratilova — watched along with thousands of tennis fans inside the stadium and out, all hoping Williams would win Monday’s match and continue playing.Bill Clinton sat next to Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Mike Tyson sat alongside Navratilova. Gladys Knight was there, Queen Latifah read a poem in homage of Williams, Spike Lee helped conduct the pregame coin toss, and Oprah Winfrey narrated a video played after the match for Williams.Williams certainly did her part, too, overcoming some early nerves to defeat Danka Kovinic of Montenegro, 6-3, 6-3, under the lights to reach the second round — meaning it all happens again on Wednesday against No. 2 Anett Kontaveit of Estonia.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesOn Monday, Williams looked far better than she had in previous matches this summer and seemed energized by the moment, and the crowd. Kovinic, ranked No. 80, said it was so loud, not only could she not hear the ball coming off Williams’s racket, she couldn’t hear it coming off her own strings at times.“On the outside courts we don’t have this experience,” she said. But Kovinic, who smiled amiably during the unusually long prematch introductions, handled her part with aplomb.Even as fans focused on Williams, many were also captivated by Olympia, her 4-year-old daughter, who wore a similar black outfit with sparkles. Olympia had beads in her hair, evoking when her mother wore beads as a player.“She asks to wear beads a lot,” Williams said. “It actually wasn’t my idea, but I was so happy when she had them on. It’s perfect on her.”After the match, a ceremony was held to honor Williams, an unusual departure for the first-round match. Williams had announced earlier this month that she intends to retire from tennis to concentrate on her family, her spiritual life and other ventures. But as King said during the ceremony, “You are just beginning.” It could have referred to both Williams’s future outside of tennis and her journey in this tournament, which has already been defined with her imprint.“I’m just not even thinking about that,” she said. “I’m just thinking about this moment. I think it’s good for me just to live in the moment now.”While inside the stadium the two players hammered balls from the baseline in front of a nervous but expectant crowd, the grounds outside the arena walls were crowded with an overflow audience of people unable to find tickets to get in.Instead, they watched on the big video screen overlooking the fountains in the main plaza, and cheered along with roughly 25,000 on the inside, as long as they could see the images from where they stood.“The screen needs to be bigger,” said Zandra Bucheli, an architect from San Francisco. Her brother, Jorge Hernandez, from Long Beach, N.Y. — and an architect, as well — said that despite not getting inside the stadium, his family members were still enjoying the scene in the plaza.“It’s just over the wall,” he said. “And the atmosphere out here is good. You get a feel for it.”The Gray family, from Bowie, Md., drove four hours to watch Monday’s matches and planned to drive back home after it was all over.“I’m extremely excited,” said Anita Gray, whose two sons, Cody, 12, and Coy, 14, play competitive tennis and train at the Tennis Center in College Park, Md., where the 26th-ranked Frances Tiafoe first honed his game. The boys’ father, Rory V. Gray, has been coming to the U.S. Open since 1993 and said he would watch Williams and her sister Venus working out on the back courts at the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center with their father, Richard Williams. They were both schoolgirls at the time, and virtually no one else was there watching with him.It was a far different scene on Monday when Serena Williams practiced before the night match. Hundreds of fans waited patiently for her to appear at about 6:15 p.m. for a half-hour warm up. As soon as she emerged into view, the fans began to scream and cheer while a dozen cameras followed Williams to the door of the courts.Fans outside of Arthur Ashe Stadium as Serena Williams’s match was about to begin.Peter Foley/EPA, via ShutterstockWhen her practice session ended, the fans applauded again, and Williams lifted her racket to acknowledge their cheers as she walked off with Rennae Stubbs, her coach. Not long after, she was making her grand entrance into Ashe Stadium.“I don’t know if she can win it all,” said Shayla Veasley, a certified athletic trainer from Harlem. “But I’m hoping for at least a run to the semis. We just want to see more of her.”Menuarn Burns, 74, a retiree from Shreveport, La., said she felt lucky to have tickets for the match, which she had been anticipating for days. She admires and respects Williams, but she said she would not be sad when the great champion is finally gone from the tennis tour.“Everyone has to grow old,” she said. “She’s earned a chance to move on to something else.” More

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      Serena Williams Rises to the Occasion, Like So Many Times Before

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      Williams met a valedictory night at the U.S. Open with a win that was fitting, and with a second-round match on Wednesday, the farewell party at Arthur Ashe Stadium continues.It was an opening night at the U.S. Open that could have been the closing night of Serena Williams’s 27-year professional singles career.But win or lose, Williams was getting the ceremonial treatment in Arthur Ashe Stadium. The guest list and laudatory tone were set; the protocol and the videos narrated by Queen Latifah and Oprah Winfrey were in place.It felt closer to a rock concert than a first-round tennis match as Williams walked into the sold-out stadium where she has experienced triumph and heartache in fairly equal measure only to be greeted this time by perhaps the loudest extended roar of support she has experienced in her nearly 41 years.“Really overwhelming,” Williams said. “I could feel it in my chest, and it was a really good feeling. It’s a feeling I will never forget and that meant a lot to me.”Williams and the CBS journalist Gayle King after the match.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesIt was the message and gift that the crowd of nearly 24,000 in Ashe Stadium clearly wanted to deliver with Williams nearing the finish line.A loss to the 80th-ranked Danka Kovinic would have been no surprise. Williams has struggled with her movement and timing since returning to action in June after nearly a one-year hiatus.In her early comeback tournaments, she had looked late to the ball and late to the realization that time is undefeated. In her last match before the U.S. Open, she was beaten, 6-4, 6-0, in the first round of the Western and Southern Open in Mason, Ohio, by a player less than half her age: 19-year-old Emma Raducanu, last year’s big-surprise U.S. Open women’s singles champion.New York, despite the valedictory mood, was in danger of becoming a downer, and Williams was hardly reassuring in the early going against Kovinic as she went down a service break with double faults and unforced errors piling up.But with Kovinic serving and just one point away from a 4-2 first-set lead, Williams struck a backhand return that landed on the outside edge of the baseline for a winner that got her back to deuce.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.It was a slightly mis-hit shot that easily could have produced a different outcome, but the winner rattled Kovinic, who double faulted twice in a row.It was 3-3 in a hurry, and Williams took the hint and the momentum, sweeping the next three games to take the first set and then clicking into a gear she has not experienced in quite some time to take command.Spectators watched Williams on a big screen set up at Hudson Yards in Manhattan.Anna Watts for The New York TimesTroubled by knee pain in Ohio, she looked significantly quicker on Monday. She made errors on the move but at least she was moving. Though this was hardly vintage Williams, there were certainly nods to past glories as she began ripping ferocious full-cut return winners, closing on high balls with cocksure swing volleys and even holding serve at love.Raducanu, who barely made an unforced error and rarely had to hit a second serve in the last tournament Williams played before Monday night, was certainly a higher hurdle to clear than Kovinic, who finished with eight double faults and put only 44 percent of her first serves in play.But this, by the end, was an improved Williams, and it was evident her confidence grew as the match progressed in this grand yet so-familiar space.She was asked if the idea of retirement was now causing her less pain. In Toronto, shortly after her announcement, she broke down in tears at the post-match ceremony after losing to Belinda Bencic in the second round.“I do feel different; I think I was really emotional in Toronto and Cincinnati, and it was very difficult,” Williams said. “It’s extremely difficult still, because I absolutely love being out there. The more tournaments I play, I feel like the more I can belong out there. That’s a tough feeling to have and to leave knowing the more you do it, the more you can shine. But it’s time for me, you know, to evolve to the next thing.”Much has changed in Ashe Stadium since Williams made her U.S. Open debut in 1997, playing doubles with her older sister Venus. The court, once green, is now blue. The stadium, once fully exposed to the elements and swirling winds, now features a retractable roof that has changed the acoustics and the airflow even when the roof remains open.There are screens and more screens: on the walls and in the hands of the fans. And as Williams approached the end of this first-round victory that no one was taking for granted this year, many of the spectators rose to their feet as she prepared to return Kovinic’s serve on match point, holding their phones aloft to capture the moment.It was a rare, perhaps unprecedented scene — a head start on a standing ovation — and Williams delivered closure, finishing off the 6-3, 6-3 victory and then celebrating with a victory jig before the start of the bigger celebration — of her place in tennis and the wider culture. It was a surprise to Williams, who sat courtside in her chair as Gayle King and Billie Jean King took turns offering tributes.“You touched our hearts and minds to be our authentic self,” Billie Jean King said. “To use our voices. To dream big. Thank you for your leadership and commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion and especially for women and women of color. Most of all, thank you for sharing your journey with every single one of us.”Tamara King, a 42-year-old African American woman, was among those in Ashe Stadium. Once a Monica Seles fan, she soon became a Williams fan after Serena and Venus turned pro in the 1990s. After hearing that Serena’s retirement was imminent, she said she spent $3,000 on a ticket to Monday’s match.Multiple times throughout the night, she was moved to tears.“Never thought that I would be able to pay to be able to sit and see somebody that looks like me be loved by so many people at a court like Arthur Ashe Stadium,” Tamara King said. “It’s just full circle, because you know Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe were the pioneers of this. And now we have Serena and Venus, who have passed the torch to like Coco, which is just amazing for Black women. It’s amazing for tennis. Hopefully, it’ll continue.”King was referring to Coco Gauff, the rising 18-year-old American star who reached the French Open final this year and won her first-round match in Ashe Stadium earlier in the day, beating the French qualifier Leolia Jeanjean. But Gauff, like King and so many others, was watching Williams on a Monday when the Open set a night-session record on the grounds with 29,402 paying spectators.For their money, they got a match and what amounted to a farewell party — even if Williams is not quite ready to say farewell just yet.Despite the first-person Vogue essay earlier this month indicating that the end was near, she was still not prepared late Monday night to confirm that this will be her last tournament.“I’ve been pretty vague about it, right?” Williams said in the playful tone that is usually reserved for good nights at the office. “I’m going to stay vague, because you never know.”Williams will face No. 2 seed Anett Kontaveit in the second round on Wednesday.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesWhat is clear is that this tournament is not over. She has entered the doubles draw with Venus, with whom she has already won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles. And on Wednesday, she will face the No. 2 seed Anett Kontaveit in the second round of the singles tournament. That is perhaps less daunting than it appears on the draw sheet.Kontaveit, an Estonian who resides in London and has the English accent to prove it, has a powerful baseline game but has reserved her best performances for lesser occasions. She has been past the fourth round only once in a Grand Slam tournament, reaching the quarterfinals of the 2020 Australian Open, and has not been past the second round in the first three majors this season, in part because of the after effects of contracting Covid-19.She is also well aware that Wednesday night will be a new experience on two levels. She, like most of Williams’s opponents on tour these days, has never faced her, and Kontaveit has never faced any opponent in an atmosphere like this.“I was really rooting for her to win today,” Kontaveit said. “I mean, this is the last chance. Better late than never.”If the U.S. Open organizers threw this big a bash for Williams after a first-round victory, what might they do if she beats the No. 2 seed?Kris Rhim More

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      Serena Williams Wins First-Round Match Over Danka Kovinic at US Open

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      Serena Williams’s Grand Slam singles career will live on for at least another match.On one of her favorite stages, Williams, a 23-time Grand Slam singles champion, beat Danka Kovinic of Montenegro, 6-3, 6-3, in front of a celebrity-packed capacity crowd on an electric opening night at the U.S. Open.This win came just a few weeks after she announced that she planned to step away from tennis after the U.S. Open to focus on having another child and on her business interests, though she was not shy about showing ambivalence about her decision.“I absolutely love being out there,” Williams said after the win. “The more tournaments I play, the more I feel I can belong out there.”Assuming she follows through with her plans to stop playing, Monday night’s win means the end of one of the most successful and influential careers in sports history won’t arrive until the second round of the U.S. Open, or even later. Williams will have a tougher test Wednesday against No. 2 seed Anett Kontaveit of Estonia, whom she has never faced. But Kontaveit has struggled of late, especially after a bout with Covid earlier in the year.Throughout the match, and especially in the final games as Williams bulldozed across the line, there were glimpses of the power and athleticism that had made Williams a boundary-breaking force that changed both her sport and women’s athleticism.Williams won the first set with strong serving in the final game.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesAnd on a heavy, late-summer New York evening, on the court where she captured her first Grand Slam singles title in 1999, it was enough to topple Kovinic, the sort of player Williams has rolled over in maybe an hour in so many early-round matches in so many other Grand Slams. Williams was shaky and rusty at the start, double-faulting and netting easy ground strokes, but she got better as the night wore on and ultimately dictated how the match was played and how it finished.It may have just been one more first-round match that, if she had lost it, would have surprised few. No one had expected much from Williams coming into this tournament. Monday night’s match seemed to be as much of a gift for the boldfaced names and everyone else at Arthur Ashe Stadium as it was a chance for Williams to blast some final serves and winners, no matter what the numbers on the scoreboard said when it was over.Queen Latifah was there, and so was President Bill Clinton, Anna Wintour, the Vogue editor, and Katie Couric, and Matt Damon, and Hugh Jackman, and Naomi Osaka, who just the other day had called Williams the biggest force in the sport, and that included the superstar male group of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.Williams also plans to play in the doubles competition with her sister Venus, herself a seven-time Grand Slam singles champion, but Monday was always going to be Serena Williams’s valedictory, or the start of it, a night that, win-or-lose, would be a celebration. Williams made sure to show up for the party, and so did her daughter, Olympia, 4, who wore a matching outfit with her hair in beads evoking a young Serena, and nearly stole the show.Williams has endured a 27-year roller coaster filled with long stretches of near invincibility as well as injury-plagued years that made it seem like this night might have occurred long ago.She has collected armfuls of championship trophies — and came so close to several more in the final phase of her career — and also endured the headline-grabbing controversies that followed her run-ins with tennis officials on the court where she played Monday night.The crowd included President Bill Clinton; the filmmaker Spike Lee; Anna Wintour, the Vogue editor; the fashion designer Vera Wang; and several A-list actors.Jamie Squire/Getty ImagesFor Williams, who turns 41 in four weeks and is arguably the greatest player of all time, a loss to Kovinic, the 80th-ranked player in the world, was not the way she wanted to wave goodbye to her singles career.She has been a shadow of her former self this summer, during the singles matches that are serving as her coda after nearly a year away from the game she has loved and dedicated her life to. The impromptu farewell began in earnest at Wimbledon, made stops in Toronto and Ohio and now continues in New York at the U.S. Open for at least one more singles match, and a doubles match.It was Tony Godsick, the longtime agent for Federer, another champion struggling to figure out what his goodbye should look like, who said earlier this summer that going out gracefully doesn’t require lifting a championship trophy.It means going out on one’s own terms, not with an injury, like the torn hamstring that sent Williams off the court in tears at Wimbledon in 2021, but with a final chance to compete and soak in the roars from the crowd.“That atmosphere was a lot,” she said.She will hear the fans at least twice more this week.Their roar began echoing through the stadium as Williams walked onto the court just before 7:30 p.m. following a two-minute tribute video. She wore a black bedazzled jacket and headband and a wrap that flowed from her waist to her ankles.“Overwhelming,” she said of the noise. “I could feel it in my chest. And it was a really good feeling.”They roared again as she walked to the center of the court to join the film director Spike Lee for the coin toss, and they lifted her after two early double faults, as she saved break points in the first game, and then as she broke Kovinic in the second with one of those patented forehand putaways from the front of the court. Williams pumped her fist and let the noise fall over Kovinic.Kovinic and Williams were tied at three games apiece in the first set before Williams pulled away.Danielle Parhizkaran/USA Today Sports, via ReutersKovinic settled in though, and two games later the match was tied. She wasn’t going anywhere, especially with Williams struggling to find a rhythm with her serve and netting easy forehands.But Williams did what she has done for a very long time. She sensed an opening, a moment of weakness in her opponent, and she pounced.It happened midway through the first set, with Kovinic serving to go up two games. Williams hit a wobbly backhand that looked like it was going long, but it caught the back of the baseline and the edge of the sideline, and Kovinic then double-faulted the game away.All even once more, Williams started winning the points she needed to. A 115-mile-an-hour ace got her to set point. And then another cannon serve hit her target down the center of the court and Kovinic couldn’t get it back, letting the crowd send up a roar as Williams squatted and pumped her arms. Arthur Ashe Stadium was hers once more.As the match wore on, it became the kind of contest that Williams relishes, with two players banging balls from the middle of the backcourt. Did Kovinic even realize as she sprayed forehands wide and deep and into the net that she’d fallen into a classic Williams trap, abandoning the angles and spins that have won her matches before?If she did, Williams had no intention of letting her out.Fans gathered at Hudson Yards in Manhattan to watch the match. Anna Watts for The New York TimesA few long rallies early in the second set had a gassed Williams going to the towel to catch her breath. But the more balls Williams hit, the better she hit them. Each service game became a little better than the last one.She started jumping into Kovinic’s second serves to her backhand, sending winners across the court. And in the fifth game of the second set, Kovinic sent one too many forehands long. Williams had broken her serve to go up 3-2 and moved within shouting distance of the finish line. Later, a rolling backhand winner down the line got her to within a game of the victory. She raised her left fist and the roars echoed once more.Three points later, they stood for match point, a backhand into the net, and Williams was high-stepping and pirouetting like she did in the old days.Now she will get Kontaveit, as shaky a No. 2 seed as there has ever been.“It’s like Serena 2.0,” Williams said of the life that awaits her when this is all done. That will wait for now. This party rolls on. More

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      Serena Williams’s No. 1 Supporter Is Her Daughter, Olympia

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      Serena Williams won the Australian Open in 2017 when she was pregnant. Her daughter, Olympia, is now 4 (she turns 5 on Thursday), and was at Arthur Ashe Stadium on Monday night to watch her mother compete.She also nearly stole the show on the ESPN broadcast.As Williams hit aces and swing volleys, which have come to define her game and legacy, Olympia sat nearby in Williams’s player’s box. She donned braids with white beads on them, paying homage to a style her mother wore when she won her first U.S. Open in 1999. Olympia also wore a black bedazzled top that matched the one her mother wore on court.“It was either her wear beads or me,” Williams said during a news conference after her win.“I wanted to do it but I just didn’t have the time,” she said, before adding that Olympia has asked to wear beads a lot.“I was so happy when she had them on, it’s perfect on her.” she said.Olympia — whose full name is Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr. — watched Williams play, but also spent time going back and forth between playing with Isha Price’s hair and sitting in her father’s lap, clapping. Price is one of Williams’s sisters.“I look forward to just being a mom,” Williams said during a post-match ceremony. “She’s such a good girl and I just want to be a good mom to her.”Williams began her farewell essay in Vogue with an anecdote about Olympia and how she felt she needed to choose between tennis and family:Don’t get me wrong: I love being a woman, and I loved every second of being pregnant with Olympia. I was one of those annoying women who adored being pregnant and was working until the day I had to report to the hospital—although things got super complicated on the other side. And I almost did do the impossible: A lot of people don’t realize that I was two months pregnant when I won the Australian Open in 2017. But I’m turning 41 this month, and something’s got to give.After the match, Olympia and her father went up to the player’s lounge to get ice cream. More

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      In First Round of the US Open, a Ukrainian Player Upset Simona Halep

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      Daria Snigur, 20, burst into tears after defeating Simona Halep of Romania, a two-time Grand Slam singles champion, in three sets on Monday in the first round of the U.S. Open.Snigur, a Ukrainian who is ranked No. 124 in the world, was making her debut in the main draw of a Grand Slam singles tournament; she had to win three matches to qualify. Her win over Halep was her first career victory at the WTA Tour level.“When I was in the moment, I didn’t understand what happened,” Snigur told reporters after the match. “I think it was the best match in my career.”After Snigur’s win, her father, who was in the stands, put his hands on top of his head as if in disbelief.“My father didn’t understand, too,” Snigur said.Halep, the No. 7 seed, is coached by Patrick Mouratoglou, Serena Williams’s former coach. Halep had been given 8-to-1 odds to win the tournament before it began, according to SportsBetting.ag.“I had tickets tomorrow to Warsaw,” Snigur said.After shaking hands with Halep and the chair umpire, Snigur stepped back onto the court to wave at the crowd. She made a heart shape with her hands over a yellow-and-blue ribbon affixed to her top, a tribute to her country in the midst of war.“Ukraine is always in my heart,” Snigur said of the gesture. “This victory is for Ukraine.”While her father was able to travel with her for the tournament, Snigur said that her mother was still in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital. Leading up to the U.S. Open, Snigur said she trained in the Latvian capital of Riga because the tennis facility she used in Ukraine had been bombed by Russian forces.“Sometimes it’s impossible to play, but I try to do my best,” Snigur said. “I try to do the best for Ukraine. I try to support my country.”In another symbol of support for the country, the Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York, an amateur ensemble that specializes in music from Ukraine, performed a song before Monday night’s match in Arthur Ashe Stadium between Serena Williams and Danka Kovinic. More

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      Is Serena Williams the GOAT? Probably. Maybe. Without a Doubt.

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      Follow live as Serena Williams plays Danka Kovinic at the U.S. Open.In the stands this month at the Western & Southern Open in Ohio there seemed to be no debate.There were shouts of “GOAT!” in Serena Williams’s direction and banners that read “GOAT” in her honor.In February, Williams appeared to be in a similarly conclusive frame of mind during Milan Fashion Week when she wore a black sweatshirt with “GOAT” in large white letters: a product of her own fashion line.With her retirement now imminent, it is certainly time to celebrate her long and phenomenal career, one of the most extraordinary from start to near-finish of any athlete.A successful Black woman in a predominantly white sport, she has beaten the odds, and talented opponents from multiple generations, across four decades. She has swatted aces and baseline winners, hustled for drop shots, lunged for returns and scrapped back from adversity on and off the court with the sort of sustained tenacity and triumph that only transcendent champions can muster.As she bids farewell, emotions are rightly running high, yet to unreservedly proclaim her the GOAT (greatest of all time) in women’s tennis is not as straightforward as a short overhead into an open court.Serena Williams in 2017 winning her seventh Australian Open title after defeating her sister Venus. She has won 23 Grand Slam singles titles.Mark R. Cristino/European Pressphoto AgencyGreat will mean different things to different people. Performance is part of it but surely not all of it, and it seems fitting that the first athlete to embrace the GOAT acronym was Muhammad Ali, who billed himself understandably as “the Greatest” and managed some of his business interests through a company named G.O.A.T. Inc. Ali was no doubt a fabulous boxer but also a deeply symbolic figure.GOAT arguments are passionate and often unresolvable no matter what the sport. In the case of Williams, larger than life herself, it deserves to be a debate, not a processional.Though they are likely to be inconclusive, there are legitimate reasons to lean toward one of Williams’s predecessors, in particular Martina Navratilova or Steffi Graf, if you don’t want to travel through the mists of time to Margaret Court, who achieved the Grand Slam in 1970 and was the best player of her era.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.Tennis history is long for a modern sport: Wimbledon dates to 1877 and the U.S. Championships to 1881. The game and equipment have improved drastically (Navratilova and her friendly rival Chris Evert once played with wooden rackets), and the measures of success have shifted, too.“It’s really difficult to compare one generation to another,” Williams once said. “Things change — power, technique, technology.”While there are still formidable obstacles to fair comparisons, and though Williams’s 23 Grand Slam singles titles, an Open-era record and her signature achievement, loom like Mount Rushmore, the title count was not the coin of the realm in earlier eras.“Nowadays, the Grand Slams are much more revered than they were in my time,” Navratilova said.Achieving a Grand Slam, by winning all four majors in the same calendar year, was a clear goal after Don Budge became the first to do it in 1938, but a player’s total number of Grand Slam singles titles was not always a major talking point.“We really weren’t concerned with the number,” Rod Laver, the red-haired Australian who completed Grand Slams twice in singles, in 1962 and 1969, once told me. “I’m not sure I even knew exactly how many I had.” (He had 11 Grand Slam singles titles.)Wimbledon and the U.S. Championships, now the U.S. Open, have had cachet nearly from the start, but the prestige of the other two Grand Slam tournaments, the Australian Open and the French Open, has fluctuated greatly. International stars regularly skipped them until the 1990s, dissuaded by distance and Christmas-season dates that came with the Australian Open and by more lucrative and sometimes binding commitments.Players have always had to miss major tournaments because of injury, but champions like Billie Jean King, Navratilova and Evert missed quite a few by choice. So did Court, who retired early, only to reconsider, and later had two pregnancies that interrupted her career.Margaret Court in the second round of the U.S. Open Championships in 1970.Associated PressCourt, an imposing net rusher from Australia who dominated her rivalry with King, finished with 24 Grand Slam singles titles and 64 Grand Slam titles overall. Both are records. And though 11 of Court’s major singles titles came in Australia when it had smaller draws and often weaker fields than other majors, 24 is still the number that Williams has been chasing openly and unsuccessfully since taking her own maternity leave in 2017.Graf, the only player to have won all four majors at least four times, finished with 22 Grand Slam singles titles despite playing about a decade less than Williams. Evert and Navratilova finished with 18 apiece and would surely have won more if they had committed to all the majors like Williams and other contemporary stars.Evert and Navratilova also had a still-fledgling tour to carry, which meant a busier schedule than today’s biggest stars.“There was definitely more of a commitment from the WTA standpoint because it was early on and we really had to prove ourselves,” Evert said.Williams has blown hot and cold on the tour, sometimes skipping its bigger events, including the year-end tour championships.That lighter schedule probably extended her career but also helps explain why Williams ranks third in total weeks at No. 1 with 319. Graf leads with 377; Navratilova is next with 332. Though Williams finished as year-end No. 1 on five occasions — another significant measure of success — Navratilova did it seven times and Graf a record eight times.There is also a big disparity in tour singles titles. Williams’s total of 73 puts her fifth on the Open-era career list, far behind Navratilova, who won 167 singles titles and 177 doubles titles in a period when doubles had more cachet than it does now. Navratilova also had a long period of genuine dominance, losing just 14 singles matches in five years from 1984 to 1988. Evert, also a consistent threat, won 157 singles titles; Graf won 107 even though she retired at age 30.Two other points in Graf’s favor: She had a career winning percentage in singles of 89 percent, the best of the modern GOAT contenders (Williams’s is at 85 percent). Graf is also the only player, male or female, to complete the so-called Golden Slam, winning all four majors and the Olympic singles title in 1988.Navratilova and Williams both had great runs in majors: Navratilova won six straight in 1983 and 1984; Williams twice won four in a row, the so-called Serena Slams, from 2002 to 2003 and from 2014 to 2015. But neither Navratilova nor Williams could cope with the heavy pressure that came with finishing off the true Grand Slam, falling two matches short.Williams was stunned in the semifinals of the 2015 U.S. Open by Roberta Vinci, an unseeded Italian whose sliced backhand caused Williams big trouble, but not as much trouble as Williams’s nerves.“She lost to the Grand Slam more than anything else,” Navratilova said that night, speaking from experience.Martina Navratilova, left, and Chris Evert, right, posing for a photo with Serena Williams after she won the 2014 U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York.Mike Segar/ReutersWhat bears remembering is that Williams was 33, retirement age for many a previous champion, and yet she was seemingly still peaking: a tribute to her talent, competitive drive and work with Patrick Mouratoglou, an ambitious Frenchman who became her first formal coach on tour other than her parents, Richard and Oracene.With Mouratoglou, she chose a racket with a larger head and changed strings to add more spin and develop more margin for error and a more effective Plan B.They also emphasized competing more often week to week to make her sharper at the majors.Her results and confidence soared. With Mouratoglou, she went on to win 10 more Grand Slam singles titles, all in her 30s. That had no precedent in women’s tennis, and it is one of the strongest arguments for bestowing GOAT status on Williams. She and her older sister Venus changed the game and raised the bar for the opposition, many of whom could not keep up, fading or retiring while the Williamses continued.Serena Williams was not consistently dominant: She had more dips in form and barren patches than Navratilova, Graf and Evert, and even dropped out of the top 100 in 2006. Arguably, she also lacked a transcendent rivalry, dominating Venus, 7-2, in major finals and playing her in only one final at any level after 2009. Though they had some memorable duels, the rivalry between the sisters was, particularly early on, sometimes as uncomfortable for the viewers as for the siblings.“Martina had Chrissie; Steffi had Martina and Monica Seles; Court had Billie Jean and Maria Bueno,” said Steve Flink, an American tennis historian and author.“During Serena’s great years in her 30s, she had no formidable rival to test her to the hilt; that is not her fault but a factor,” Flink added, of the GOAT debate. But Williams, despite her dips, did rule over the best talent available, compiling a 176-72 record against players who have been ranked No. 1. She went 20-2 against her tennis muse Maria Sharapova, a blond Russian who out-earned her in sponsorships for years, which Williams understandably viewed as an injustice in light of her superior résumé.Williams would agree that she knew how to channel a grudge.In her essay in Vogue this month announcing her imminent retirement, she wrote: “There were so many matches I won because something made me angry or someone counted me out. That drove me.”Serena Williams playing Naomi Osaka in the women singles finals of the U.S. Open in 2018.Ben Solomon for The New York TimesWilliams endured and excelled, reaching four Grand Slam singles finals after returning from pregnancy in 2018 despite some in her close circle counseling against a comeback at age 36.Matching or breaking Court’s record, however flawed, at that late stage might have truly ended the GOAT debate. But Williams has still moved many as a working mother and as a superstar willing to put herself back on the line past her prime.Williams, unlike Navratilova, one of the first openly gay superstar athletes, has not been a political crusader. She has declined, most recently, to comment on Roe v. Wade being overturned. Her approach has been shaped perhaps by her faith (she is a Jehovah’s Witness) and perhaps because of the risk athletes from earlier generations ran with sponsors for straying outside the lines (“Republicans buy sneakers, too,” Michael Jordan once said).But Williams’s 14-year boycott of the tournament at Indian Wells, where she and her family were booed and, according to her father, Richard, subjected to racist taunts, spoke louder than words. She has had major outbursts that have cost her some fans. But she has been consistently inspiring, as a champion and a Black woman who roared back after major setbacks in her professional and personal life.Those include the murder of her half sister Yetunde Price; the separation and divorce of her parents; a blood clot in her lung in 2011 that she said had her on her “death bed”; and another dangerous blood clotting issue during the birth of her daughter, Olympia, in 2017.Resilience is a mark of greatness, too, and though she may or may not be the greatest in a very strong field, it is certainly one more reason to appreciate her as she walks into the din on Monday night — less than a month from her 41st birthday — to play in one last U.S. Open.

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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: 23 Grand Slam Titles, in the Books

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      The New York Times’s coverage of Williams’s 23 Grand Slam singles titles reflects more than two decades of greatness, and some surprises along the way.How long has Serena Williams been a champion? She won her first Grand Slam singles title in the 20th century.Williams was 17 when she won the 1999 U.S. Open. She had beads in her hair and, even at that early stage, plenty of sting in her strokes as she knocked out five past or future major champions, including the 18-year-old Martina Hingis in the final.“Oh, my God, I won, oh my God,” Williams said, her hand to her chest, looking as surprised as the rest of us.Williams has seldom been the underdog since, but surprises have continued to be her trademark.When she won the 2017 Australian Open, she was well aware that she was two months pregnant, but she kept the secret from all but her closest friends and family during the tournament and in the weeks that followed.Now, the trophy from that victory sits on a shelf in the bedroom of her daughter, Olympia, who will turn 5 in September.A strong argument can be made that that victory, which was Williams’s 23rd Grand Slam singles title, was as remarkable as her first, when she became the first African American woman since Althea Gibson in 1958 to win the U.S. Open.Seven of Williams’s other major singles victories have come against her older sister Venus, who was born just 15 months ahead of her.Williams, who said in Vogue this month that she plans to retire from tennis, is one championship shy of Margaret Court’s career record of 24 Grand Slam singles titles. Williams is set to compete again in this year’s U.S. Open, which could be her last chance to tie Court’s record.“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want that record,” Williams told the magazine. “Obviously I do. But day to day, I’m really not thinking about her.”Here are excerpts from The New York Times’s coverage of Williams’s 23 Grand Slam titles.1999 U.S. OPENDefeated Martina Hingis, 6-3, 7-6Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesUsing her racket like a stun gun to pound and paralyze her savvy opponent, the No. 1-ranked Martina Hingis, into submission, Serena Williams, the 17-year-old follow-up act to her big sister phenom, Venus, captured the women’s championship at the United States Open in her first appearance in a Grand Slam final.“Oh, my God, I won, oh my God,” the jubilant Williams mouthed, clasping both hands to her thumping heart, after Hingis motored a double-handed backhand out of bounds on Williams’s third match point. That sealed a 6-3, 7-6 (7-4) upset for the youngest of the five Williams sisters, the one who calls herself the family extrovert. — Robin FinnRead the full article2002 French OpenDefeated Venus Williams, 7-5, 6-3Phil Cole/Getty ImagesOf the two, Serena Williams was always the one without a gatekeeper on her emotions when placed in the awkward position of playing her older sister.It was hard to forget: Venus was the one she always leaned on as a child; the one who gave up her milk money when Serena lost hers; the one with the stoic veneer of a bodyguard.Today, the Williams sisters reversed roles. Serena held on, while Venus came undone. Once the last unsteady backhand by Venus plunged into the net on the 15th stroke of match point, Serena bent over in pure relief, winning the French Open, 7-5, 6-3, and taking her first major title since the 1999 United States Open. — Selena RobertsRead the full article2002 WimbledonDefeated Venus Williams, 7-6(4), 6-3Serena Williams would punch a forehand into the deepest corner of the court, at angled degrees of difficulty that defied the condor wingspan of her older sister Venus.At times, she would throw a fist, growl or scream to punctuate her winner. At times, Venus would wince, drop her head or coax herself to try harder with an audible “Come on!”Unveiling their emotions, playing with the ferocity normally reserved only for others, Venus and Serena discarded their sibling code of conduct during Wimbledon final.They played each other, no mental baggage attached. Once Serena tucked away her first Wimbledon title, 7-6 (4), 6-3, throwing down a 103-mile-an-hour serve that was too twisting for Venus to return, they greeted each other at the net like ordinary rivals.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.A pat on the back, a kind word, and then Serena was off, waving toward the crowd with a smile as wide as the English Channel, finishing off a day when two African-Americans played in a Wimbledon final for the first time.Venus was happy for her little sister, but not the way she was at the French Open, which was won by Serena last month, when Venus snapped pictures with the photographers. Much more subdued, almost moribund, Venus may have been coming to grips with the fact that, at this moment, her little sister is the more dangerous of the two. — Selena RobertsRead the full article2002 U.S. OpenDefeated Venus Williams, 6-4, 6-3Vincent Laforet/The New York TimesIn the beginning, Venus Williams handed down the secret formula to her little sister, Serena, provided all the answers in the back of the book, but last night the one who took on tennis first left the court worn down from a season of disheartening discovery: the copy has become better than the original.Although visibly drained, Venus Williams is not the type to expose her emotions in an Oprah-style catharsis. So, she forced a smile afterSerena Williams picked her apart during a 6-4, 6-3 victory for the United States Open championship; and Venus patted her younger sister on the shoulder after Serena’s third major championship in a row, each at Venus’s expense. — Selena RobertsRead the full article2003 Australian OpenDefeated Venus Williams, 7-6 (4), 3-6, 6-4Mark Dadswell/Getty ImagesLess than a year ago, after she had to withdraw from the Australian Open with a sprained ankle, she was still trying to catch up with her big sister. But in a breathtaking, fist-pumping, title-gobbling hurry, Serena Williams has become one of the greats.She confirmed it at Rod Laver Arena, maintaining her edge over her older sibling Venus by a much slimmer margin than usual to win this year’s Australian Open, 7-6 (4), 3-6, 6-4, and become only the fifth woman to hold all four Grand Slam singles titles at once.“It’s really special to have come such a long way,” she said.It was not quite a true Grand Slam, which requires winning the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon and the United States Open in the same calendar year. That feat was achieved by Maureen Connolly in 1953, Margaret Court in 1970 and Steffi Graf in 1988. Instead, Serena has chosen to dub her run the Serena Slam, an allusion to Tiger Woods’s similar achievement in golf. — Christopher ClareyRead the full article2003 WimbledonDefeated Venus Williams, 4-6, 6-4, 6-2Once again, Serena Williams won a Grand Slam singles title with mixed emotions.In ordinary circumstances, defending a Wimbledon title would be, at the least, cause for a whoop of delight and the broadest of grins, but there is nothing ordinary about the story of the Williams sisters. When the latest, plot-enriching chapter came to a close with Venus Williams’s forehand return flying wide, Serena’s reaction was muted as she jogged to the net.It might be getting easier for Serena to play her older sister, but it is still not nearly the same as matching huge ground strokes and healthy egos with an outsider. Playing Venus when she was injured only added a layer of complexity.“I just had to tell myself to look at the ball and nothing else,” Serena told the crowd on Center Court after a 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 victory gave her a sixth Grand Slam singles title. — Christopher ClareyRead the full article2005 Australian OpenDefeated Lindsay Davenport, 2-6, 6-3, 6-0Nick Laham/Getty ImagesThere were no match points to be saved, no steady accumulation of suspense, no gravity-defying series of leaps when victory was secure.But it was a surprising turnabout just the same, and though Williams was walking and serving gingerly in the early stages of this Australian Open final, she was soon swinging freely and watching Lindsay Davenport’s errant groundstrokes and second serves fly by at a great, anticlimactic rate.Midway through the lopsided third set, it appeared obvious to everyone under the closed roof in Rod Laver Arena, including Davenport, that Williams was on her way to her second Australian Open title and seventh Grand Slam singles title. — Christopher ClareyRead the full article2007 Australian OpenDefeated Maria Sharapova, 6-1, 6-2It has been two weeks of turning back the clock for Serena Williams, and under a closed roof during the Australian Open women’s final Saturday, she completed her astoundingly quick trip back to dominance against the top-seeded Maria Sharapova.Under the lights, she was the relentless Williams of yore: crushing returns and first serves, casting ominous glances across the net and showing not the slightest hint of vulnerability as she raced to a 6-1, 6-2 victory.The rout, which required just one hour and three minutes, capped one of the most remarkable comebacks in tennis history, and it came against the young, confident woman who will regain the No. 1 ranking on Monday.But there could be no doubt about who was No. 1 Saturday, as Williams applied enormous pressure from the start and methodically extracted all the suspense to win her eighth Grand Slam singles title and third Australian Open title. — Christopher ClareyRead the full article2008 U.S. OpenDefeated Jelena Jankovic, 6-4, 7-5Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNo world No. 1 in women’s tennis has slogged through so desolate a valley between peaks than Serena Williams. After relinquishing the top spot in August 2003, Williams fell so far that she wasn’t within echoing distance of the summit two years ago.Outside the top 125 at this time in 2006, Williams completed her climb back to No. 1 Sunday night with a 6-4, 7-5 victory against Jelena Jankovic to claim her third United States Open title. — Karen CrouseRead the full article2009 Australian OpenDefeated Dinara Safina, 6-0, 6-3The women’s final had finished in less than an hour, and Serena Williams was walking down the hall in Melbourne Park lined with photos of past Australian Open champions, including herself.In her arms, held tightly to her chest, was the large Daphne Akhurst Trophy that goes to the women’s champion.“It’s mine again,” Williams said in a lilting voice.Williams got no argument from Dinara Safina on Saturday night. After two weeks of uncertainty about the true state of Williams’s form, suddenly there was nothing but brutal clarity. — Christopher ClareyRead the full article2009 WimbledonDefeated Venus Williams, 7-6 (3), 6-2Hamish Blair/Getty ImagesWimbledon has long been the Williams sisters’ territory, but it was Venus, not Serena, who had the biggest stake in the place. It was Venus who had won five singles titles, including the last two. It was Venus who had won 20 straight singles matches and 34 straight sets.Despite few hints of regime change in the early rounds, this did not turn out to be her year. Instead, it was younger sister Serena’s turn to keep the Wimbledon inscribers busy. She broke open this often-edgy final midway through the second set and then secured her third Wimbledon singles title by breaking Venus’s serve in a tight final game to win. — Christopher ClareyRead the full article2010 Australian OpenDefeated Justine Henin, 6-4, 3-6, 6-2As Serena Williams collapsed on the court, weary and elated after capturing her fifth Australian Open title, those who follow tennis, or perhaps sports of any kind, knew they had witnessed the performance of a great champion. She had turned back a pretty good champion in Justine Henin for a hard-fought victory.Williams, 28, fought through pain to earn it — her right thigh and left knee and wrist were wrapped, as they have been for the past two weeks. And her grimaces and hobbled steps as she battled Henin further betrayed her distress.Williams’s ability to endure is one of her vital intangibles, as is her ardor for the competitive part of the game. — Joe DrapeRead the full article2010 WimbledonDefeated Vera Zvonareva, 6-3, 6-2Alastair Grant/Associated PressAt the end of the Wimbledon women’s singles final, Serena Williams turned toward her family in the stands. She flashed 10 fingers, then 3 fingers, for a total of 13 — her updated tally of Grand Slam singles titles.With her demolition of Vera Zvonareva, Williams accumulated another avalanche of aces, hoisted another trophy and took another step forward among tennis’s greats. Afterward, she confirmed what once seemed obvious, another otherworldly performance notwithstanding.“I’m totally human,” Williams said.The latest trophy marked her fourth Wimbledon singles title and allowed her to pass Billie Jean King for sixth place on the women’s career major singles championships list. In an on-court interview, her smile as wide as the English Channel, Williams said, “Hey, Billie, I got you.” — Greg BishopRead the full article2012 WimbledonDefeated Agnieszka Radwanska, 6-1, 5-7, 6-2For Serena Williams, the tears came slowly, a release of all the emotions that had accumulated over the last two weeks, the last two months, the last two years.There was the euphoria of winning her fifth singles title at Wimbledon, tying her older sister Venus, and her 14th in a Grand Slam tournament. The satisfaction of purging a shocking French Open implosion and the aura of vulnerability that followed. The relief that comes with reviving a career on the brink, from cheating death, from outlasting a patient and persistent adversary who threatened with a comeback nearly as stirring as Williams’s.Her appreciation of these moments is greater than it was 13 years ago, when at age 17 she announced her presence at the 1999 United States Open. There is an element of selflessness, of humility, that comes, perhaps, with age and maturity. Now 30, Williams is the first woman in her 30s to capture a Grand Slam since Martina Navratilova won Wimbledon in 1990 at age 33.“Oh my God, I can’t even describe it,” Williams said during an on-court interview on a blustery and chilly Centre Court. — Ben ShpigelRead the full article2012 U.S. OpenDefeated Victoria Azarenka, 6-2, 2-6, 7-5Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesAfter a set, a fourth United States Open title for Serena Williams looked like a foregone conclusion as she ripped serves and ground strokes at Arthur Ashe with the same intimidating blend of power and precision that has defined her summer.Who could have imagined then that by the end of this evening, victory would come as a surprise, leaving Williams with her eyes wide and her hands to her head?“I was preparing my runners-up speech,” Williams said.She would have been obliged to deliver it if the world’s No. 1-ranked player, Victoria Azarenka, had seized her opportunity when serving for the match at 5-4 in the third set. Although Azarenka had done an often-admirable job of coping with Williams’s first-strike pressure in this big-swinging final, she could not quite handle the chance to win her first United States Open.Williams, whose form and body language had fluctuated wildly after the opening set, would not lose her way again, putting an exclamation point on the feel-good story of her summer of tennis by closing out a victory that will rank among her most memorable. — Christopher ClareyRead the full article2013 French OpenDefeated Maria Sharapova, 6-4, 6-4Kenzo Triboulliard/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSerena Williams has tried to master French, as she has finally mastered the French Open again. So after she had served five aces in her last seven service points to beat Maria Sharapova, and had gone down on her knees and put her head to the clay in celebration, Williams kept up her recent habit of making her postmatch remarks to the crowd in the local language.“I’m incredible,” she said in French.That is probably not what she meant to say. But for accuracy, if not for her command of a second language, it is hard to argue with the sentiment. And it is now possible to make the case that she has a chance to become the greatest women’s player in tennis history.Williams seized one of the few achievements that had eluded her — a second French Open, to match the one she won in 2002, a tennis lifetime ago. At 31, she has won 16 Grand Slam singles events, and appears nowhere near finished. — Judy BattistaRead the full article2013 U.S. OpenDefeated Victoria Azarenka, 7-5, 6-7 (6), 6-1As it turned out, after 2 hours 45 minutes of raw emotion and territorial tennis, Serena Williams really could play in the wind, just as she has played and prevailed in so many conditions and circumstances through the years.With her 32nd birthday approaching, Williams is in increasingly rare company as the major titles continue to pile up. Although she certainly wobbled in Sunday’s United States Open final — the longest recorded women’s Open final — and although Victoria Azarenka applied plenty of intense, next-generation pressure, there was ultimately no depriving Williams of another major celebration on a court where she has experienced plenty of disaster to go with her triumphs through the years.A less resilient champion might have continued to fall apart after collapsing in the second set. Instead, Williams exhaled and willed herself into a more peaceful and less conflicted place: one where neither Azarenka nor the wind, that cursed wind, could knock her down. — Christopher ClareyRead the full article2014 U.S. OpenDefeated Caroline Wozniacki, 6-3, 6-3Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesSerena Williams was asked what the number 18 meant to her.“It means legal to do some things,” she said, laughing.But she knew what the reporter was getting at.“It also means legendary,” she added more seriously.She would not go so far as to call herself legendary — “I’m just Serena,” she said — but she joined some elite company Sunday, when she tied Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova with her 18th Grand Slam singles title.Williams had not advanced past the fourth round of a Grand Slam tournament this year, and over the last two weeks she had expressed relief and excitement at her success at the U.S. Open. When Wozniacki’s final stroke went long, Williams collapsed on her back and started to cry. In a postmatch interview, she choked up saying the word 18. — Naila-Jean MeyersRead the full article2015 Australian OpenDefeated Maria Sharapova, 6-3, 7-6 (5)The record still shows that Maria Sharapova is a pushover for Serena Williams: her muse, her matchup made in tennis heaven.Williams’s victory in the Australian Open final extended her winning streak against Sharapova to 16 matches, despite all the velocity and volume that Sharapova has mustered over the last decade.Forget head-to-head. This is off with her head.Yet Williams, who said she had a severe cold for much of this tournament, encountered some headwinds. She left the court during a rain delay in the first set and, for the first time in her nearly 20 years as a professional, threw up during a match. — Christopher ClareyRead the full article2015 French OpenDefeated Lucie Safarova, 6-3, 6-7 (2), 6-2Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesSerena Williams was too ill to get out of bed for most of Friday. She was too tightly wound to close out what would have been a routine straight-set victory against Lucie Safarova on Saturday.But as Williams’s increasingly remarkable tennis career has made clear, she is never more dangerous than when cornered.This obstacle course of a French Open provided reminders in nearly every round as Williams hit, shrieked, swore and coughed her way through all kinds of trouble, including five three-set matches and a nasty case of the flu.Saturday’s 6-3, 6-7 (2), 6-2 victory over Safarova was a fitting finale to what might have been Williams’s most challenging run to a Grand Slam singles title. — Christopher ClareyRead the full article2015 WimbledonDefeated Garbiñe Muguruza, 6-4, 6-4Three years had passed since the Wimbledon champion’s trophy was last in her possession, so Serena Williams had some fun with it.She held it high on Centre Court with both strong arms (classic). She balanced it on her head like a book in a 1950s charm school and walked with it (unconventional). At one stage, she even playfully declined to hand it back to a Wimbledon official (understandable).“At the beginning of the year, this is the one I really wanted to win,” Williams said. “So that was the first thing and the main thing on my mind.” — Christopher ClareyRead the full article2016 WimbledonDefeated Angelique Kerber, 7-5, 6-3Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOn the first point of the women’s final at Wimbledon, Angelique Kerber ended a rally with a forehand winner down the line.On the next, a Serena Williams backhand winner scorched the baseline.Yes, it was going to be one of those matches. But in contrast with the outcome of their duel in the Australian Open final in January, Williams came out as the winner.Williams tied Steffi Graf’s Open-era record for Grand Slam singles titles, gaining her 22nd. The win left her two short of Margaret Court’s overall record of 24 Grand Slam titles from 1960 to 1973.Williams, 34, had not won a major championship since last year’s Wimbledon, losing in the semifinals at the 2015 United States Open and the finals at the Australian and French Opens this year.Although she had tried to play down the importance of No. 22, she acknowledged that it was a “relief” to get there, and that there had been “some sleepless nights” after her recent Grand Slam losses. — Naila-Jean MeyersRead the full article2017 Australian OpenDefeated Venus Williams, 6-4, 6-4Michael Dodge/Getty ImagesThe tennis circuit can be an echo chamber where the same questions and themes reverberate from week to week as the locations change, but the protagonists do not.So even if Serena Williams refused to entertain questions during the tournament about the possibility of winning her 23rd Grand Slam singles title and breaking her tie for the Open-era record with Steffi Graf, there was no dodging that number in her own head.Now, after her 6-4, 6-4 victory over her sister, she can celebrate No. 23 instead of fret over it.“I’ve been chasing it for a really long time,” Williams said. “When it got on my radar, I knew I had an opportunity to get there, and I’m here. It’s a great feeling. No better place to do it than Melbourne.” — Christopher ClareyRead the full article More