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      Serena Williams and Her Fellow Tennis Greats Are Limping Toward the Exits

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      Graceful final chapters in tennis can be difficult to achieve, as Serena Williams and Roger Federer are learning firsthand.Serena Williams’s announcement of her withdrawal from the U.S. Open included 78 words and a heart emoji.It was cool and clinical, referring to her medical team’s advice to rest a torn hamstring to avoid further injury and a nod to New York, “one of the most exciting cities in the world and one of my favorite places to play,” even if it has also been the site of her most disturbing meltdowns.Williams became the third aging tennis giant in 10 days to withdraw from the U.S. Open, the year’s final Grand Slam, following Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal’s revelations about their own injury struggles. It was also the latest reminder of how messy and cruel the end of even the most storied tennis careers usually are, especially for those who stay even slightly past their sell-by dates.Nadal, 35, may have some good miles left in his bones, despite their occasional fragility, but Federer turned 40 this month, and Williams turns 40 in September.“Forty in tennis is like 65 in another job,” said John McEnroe, the seven-time Grand Slam singles champion and ESPN commentator.There are many reasons that tennis does not lend itself to perfect endings. The modern game imposes immense physical demands and a relentless schedule. Its ranking system rewards consistent, elite play and punishes those whose aging bodies only allow them to dabble with lower seeds and more difficult early-round matches. The knockout format prevents anyone, regardless of past performance, from being guaranteed a grand setting for a final match, which can easily occur on a random Tuesday in a half-empty stadium.The result is a stark choice for even the best tennis players: Go out on top while most likely leaving some championships on the table, or meander through a frustrating descent into being OK at best, which can be less than fun in a sport that shines its brightest lights on the top two or four players and lumps nearly everyone else into something of an also-ran category.A star on a team sport can flicker then fade amid the protection of teammates. There’s an unforgiving loneliness to stardom in tennis.The tennis equivalent of Derek Jeter’s gift-collecting farewell tour as the Yankees’ shortstop — an unproductive .256 batting average over 145 games coupled with not good but not embarrassing defense — is a lot of early-round losses to journeymen.Martina Navratilova was still winning doubles titles at 49, but few top singles players have followed her lead, and those who have opted to relinquish chances at future glory are rare.Steffi Graf won the 1999 French Open for her 22nd Grand Slam title, and made the Wimbledon final a month later in July. That August, she suffered a pulled hamstring and decided to retire. She said she had lost the motivation to do what was necessary to continue to play at the top of the sport. She was just 30.Paul Annacone, who coached Pete Sampras, the winner of 14 Grand Slam singles titles, said Sampras spent months following his victory at the 2002 U.S. Open figuring out whether he wanted to keep playing. He practiced, he stayed in shape, and he pondered what he still wanted from the game.Pete Sampras after winning the men’s singles final at the U.S. Open in 2002.Amy Sancetta/Associated PressThen, one day in the spring of 2003, Sampras called Annacone and told him he had figured it out. He said he was done, that he had nothing left to prove to himself. Sampras was just 32, and Annacone is certain he had more big titles left in his racket.“I don’t know how you can win and never play another match, but Pete had such clarity,” Annacone said.Compared with so many final chapters in tennis, the Sampras exit has a certain grace.Andy Murray, once a member of the game’s so-called Big Four with Federer, Nadal, and Novak Djokovic, is continuing his attempt to come back from hip replacement surgery but remains outside the top 100.“It’s tough to watch Andy Murray right now,” said McEnroe, who spoke of the increased pressure he once felt as an aging player with a diminished amount of sand left at the top of the hourglass.At the moment, Federer’s final act may be at Wimbledon, losing a set 6-0 on Centre Court with his injured knee to Hubert Hurkacz of Poland in the quarterfinal.Nadal won his 13th French Open and 20th Grand Slam singles title last October, but he fell in four sets in June to Djokovic at Roland Garros in the 2021 French Open semifinals, where he has been nearly unbeatable. He skipped Wimbledon and the Olympics, and he was last seen losing to Lloyd Harris of South Africa in the second round of the Citi Open in Washington, D.C. His comeback will hinge on solving a congenital foot problem.Williams injured her hamstring early in her opening match at Wimbledon and limped off the court.​​In an interview on Wednesday, Patrick Mouratoglou, Williams’s coach, said that the entire team knew as soon as she suffered the injury at Wimbledon that it would be a challenge for Williams to be ready for the U.S. Open, given the severity of the damage. She spent weeks resting and receiving treatments to try to nurse her leg back into shape while trying to maintain her fitness and form.“We tried everything. She did everything she could,” Mouratoglou said.He said that if the tournament was being played in three or four weeks she might be able to compete, but the risk of long-term damage if she played now was too great. The U.S. Open starts on Aug. 30 in New York.“She still wants to play and still loves to play, still wants to win Grand Slams,” Mouratoglou said of Williams. But to do that she needs to be able to train and practice at the highest level, and lately that has been a challenge. An Achilles tendon injury at last year’s U.S. Open hampered her preparations for the Australian Open in February.Williams during her semifinal match against Naomi Osaka at this year’s Australian Open. Williams lost to Osaka in straight sets.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesHe said there had been no discussion about retirement and would likely speak about what comes next for his star player in a few weeks. “I don’t have any certainty for the future at this point,” he said.The storybook ending that a record-tying 24th Grand Slam singles title would provide seems increasingly unlikely, given the depth of the sport and the demands of the competition over two weeks, said Pam Shriver, the former top player and Grand Slam doubles champion. Williams has reached four Grand Slam finals since returning from maternity leave following the birth of her daughter and has not won a set in any of those matches.“I don’t have enough evidence to tell me that she is going to be able to win seven matches and be the last one standing,” Shriver said Tuesday afternoon.Eighteen hours later, Williams joined Federer and Nadal on the U.S. Open sideline. More

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      Serena Williams Pulls Out of the U.S. Open

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      The 23-time Grand Slam champion has not played on tour since an injured right hamstring forced her out of her first-round match at Wimbledon.Serena Williams withdrew from the U.S. Open on Wednesday, pulling out of the major tournament and extending her latest break from the game that she once dominated.“After careful consideration and following the advice of my doctors and medical team, I have decided to withdraw from the US Open to allow my body to heal completely from a torn hamstring,” Williams wrote on Instagram. “New York is one of the most exciting cities in the world and one of my favorite places to play — I’ll miss seeing the fans but will be cheering everyone on from afar. Thank you for your continued support and love. I’ll see you soon.”Williams, who is ranked 22nd on the WTA Tour at age 39, has not played on tour since retiring in the first set of her first-round match at Wimbledon on June 29 because of an injured right hamstring. Williams was in tears as she shook the hand of her opponent, Aliaksandra Sasnovich, and she stumbled as she exited Centre Court, receiving assistance to reach the clubhouse.She skipped last week’s Western and Southern Open in the Cincinnati suburbs to allow herself more time to recover, and said in a statement that she planned “to be back on the court very soon.”But she could not recover in time to play at the U.S. Open, where she has won six singles titles, including her first Grand Slam singles title in 1999 as a teenager. The tournament begins Aug. 30 in New York.She last missed the U.S. Open in 2017 during her break from the sport because of the birth of her daughter, Olympia. She returned to the tour in March 2018 and until now had participated in every Grand Slam tournament since her comeback.She lost the 2018 U.S. Open final to Naomi Osaka of Japan and the 2019 U.S. Open final to Bianca Andreescu of Canada. Last year, when the tournament was held without spectators because of the pandemic, she fell in the semifinals to Victoria Azarenka of Belarus in three sets.Williams’s announcement leaves the U.S. Open without three of the sport’s biggest stars. Roger Federer, 40, and Rafael Nadal, 35, have withdrawn and ended their 2021 seasons because of injuries. This is the first time since 1997 — nearly a quarter century ago — that the U.S. Open will be played without at least one of the three.Williams, like Federer and Nadal, is one of the greatest champions in tennis history. She has often overpowered the opposition with her intimidating serve and returns. But her chances of winning a record-tying 24th Grand Slam singles title appear increasingly slim. She will turn 40 next month, and her ranking has slipped out of the top 20.Her only tournament title in the last four and a half years came in a lower-tier event in Auckland, New Zealand, in January 2020.Her future in the game remains unclear. She returned to the tour after childbirth with the goal of winning more major singles titles and surpassing Margaret Court’s longstanding record of 24. Williams last won a Grand Slam title in January 2017 at the Australian Open, defeating her sister, Venus Williams. More

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      Top Stars in Tennis Choose Rest Ahead of the U.S. Open

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      The year’s final Grand Slam tournament begins in less than three weeks, but players including Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams have chosen to skip the usual hardcourt warm-up events.As the tennis tours warm up for the U.S. Open in the summer heat of North America, the sport’s most accomplished players will arrive in New York cold.The five active players with the most Grand Slam singles titles to their names — Serena Williams, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Venus Williams — are missing from both this week’s National Bank Open in Toronto and Montreal, and next week’s Western & Southern Open in the Cincinnati suburbs. The veterans have all played selective schedules this year, but their wholesale absence from the warm-up to the year’s final major tournament, which begins on Aug. 30, is striking.Djokovic, 34, was the only one of the group to compete at the Tokyo Olympics, while Federer, Nadal, and Serena Williams opted out, and Venus Williams’s singles ranking of 112 did not qualify her for the Olympics.Djokovic’s bid for his first gold medal ended in disappointment. After reaching the semifinals in both singles and mixed doubles, Djokovic lost the singles bronze medal match to Pablo Carreño Busta, and pulled out of the mixed doubles bronze medal match citing a left shoulder injury.Djokovic, who will attempt in New York to become the first man to win all four Grand Slam singles titles in the calendar year since 1969, blamed his withdrawal from Cincinnati on fatigue.“I am taking a bit longer to recover and recuperate after quite a taxing journey from Australia to Tokyo,” Djokovic, the Western & Southern defending champion, said. “Sadly, that means I won’t be ready to compete in Cincinnati this year so I’ll turn my focus and attention to U.S. Open and spend some more time with family. See you in New York soon!”Nadal, 35, is the only one of the group to have played a warm-up event in North America. After withdrawing from both Wimbledon and the Olympics with a left foot injury, he played two matches at the Citi Open in Washington, beating Jack Sock before losing to the 50th-ranked Lloyd Harris.Nadal, who has a longstanding foot problem because his navicular bone did not correctly ossify during childhood, was upbeat about his progress after his loss to Harris.“Best news: the foot was better than yesterday,” Nadal said last week. “I was able to move a bit better, so that is very important, especially for me personally, to keep enjoying the sport and keep having energy, believing that important things are possible.”But after further practices in Washington and Toronto, Nadal withdrew from the National Bank Open on Tuesday.“I was suffering, especially in that first match,” Nadal said Tuesday of his play in Washington. “And I was suffering on the practices, too. But you always expect an improvement or you hope to improve, and that’s why I came here. And this improvement didn’t happen, no? So I really believe that I am not able to compete at the level that I need because the foot won’t allow me to move the way that I need.”Federer, who turned 40 on Sunday, cited the knee injury that forced him out of the Olympics in withdrawing from Toronto and Cincinnati.Serena Williams, who turns 40 next month, cited a leg injury on Tuesday in withdrawing from Cincinnati. Her WTA Tour ranking has fallen to 20th.Naomi Osaka, the defending U.S. Open champion, lost her third-round match at the Tokyo Olympics, but planned to play in Cincinnati.Seth Wenig/Associated PressWomen’s tennis has already had several torch-passing moments on the Grand Slam stage, like Naomi Osaka beating Williams in the final of the 2018 U.S. Open and in the semifinals of this year’s Australian Open.Osaka was already on her way to Cincinnati, her agent Stuart Duguid said on Wednesday. Osaka, 23, is the defending champion at the U.S. Open this year.The men, however, have lacked similar transition moments at the sport’s biggest events. When Dominic Thiem won last year’s U.S. Open at 27, he did so without having to face any of the so-called Big Three. Nadal and Federer both missed the tournament, and Djokovic defaulted from his fourth-round match after hitting a lineswoman with a ball. Thiem has been out of competition since June when he suffered an acute right wrist injury at a tournament in Majorca. He posted on Instagram on Wednesday that he was “swapping the splint for my racket again.”Thiem’s U.S. Open win last year remains the only Grand Slam singles championship won by a man born in the 1990s; 17 Grand Slam titles have been won by women born in that decade, with two more won by women born in the 2000s.Asked about the absence of established stars in the wake of Nadal’s withdrawal, the third-ranked Stefanos Tsitsipas pointed out the problem’s upside.“I think there is room for new stars,” Tsitsipas said after his second-round win in Toronto. “It’s been a lot about them in recent years, and I think now it’s showing that things are changing. We see a different generation of players stepping up and showing what they are capable of.“It’s interesting to have this kind of variation and change of thrones, let’s call it,” Tsitsipas added. “It’s interesting for our game. We, ourselves, we have generated our own team of people and fans that support us, give us love, and are there for us in each single match following us.”One fan seemed plenty excited for Tsitsipas in Toronto, begging “please touch me!” as he reached down toward him.There was no physical contact, but the fan left satisfied. “He smiled at me! He literally smiled!” More

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      After Serena Williams Is Injured, Wimbledon Defends Court Conditions

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      Slippery grass caused tournament-ending injuries in back-to-back matches, and many stars lost their footing during the first two days of the tournament.WIMBLEDON, England — Matches continued on Centre Court at Wimbledon as rain fell outside on the first two days of the tournament that showcases top stars in an arena considered a cathedral of the sport before thousands of fans. More

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      Serena Williams Out of Wimbledon With an Injury

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      Williams started her first-round match against Aliaksandra Sasnovich aggressively, but she slipped on the grass court and later fell after injuring her right hamstring.WIMBLEDON, England — Serena Williams’s 20th Wimbledon ended shortly after it began. She retired 34 minutes into the first set of her first-round match against Aliaksandra Sasnovich on Tuesday night because of a right hamstring injury. More

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      Serena Williams Won’t Play at the Tokyo Olympics

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      The four-time gold medalist previously said that travel restrictions that might prevent her from taking her daughter to the Games would factor into her decision.Serena Williams, a four-time gold medalist, indicated on Sunday at Wimbledon that she would not play in the Olympics in Tokyo next month.“I’m actually not on the Olympic list,” she said. “If so, then I should not be on it.”The decision was not unexpected. Williams had expressed hesitancy about playing in Tokyo in part because of the travel restrictions that might have prevented her from taking her daughter, Olympia, with her to the Games.“I would not be able to go function without my 3-year-old around,” Williams said earlier this season. “I think I would be in a depression. We’ve been together every day of her life.”Olympic officials have not made clear publicly what exceptions might be made for athletes who wish to come to Tokyo with their children. It was unclear on Sunday whether that was the decisive factor for Williams, who is 39 and set to play at Wimbledon for the 20th time.“There’s a lot of reasons that I made my Olympic decision,” she said at a news conference. “I don’t feel like going into them today. Maybe another day. Sorry.”Williams has been one of the most successful Olympians in tennis, winning gold medals in doubles with her sister Venus in 2000, 2008 and 2012. She also won the singles at the 2012 Olympics in London, where the tennis event was held on the same grass courts as Wimbledon.Her singles victory in London was perhaps the most dominant performance of her career. She did not come close to dropping a set in six matches and overwhelmed four players who had been ranked No. 1: Jelena Jankovic, Caroline Wozniacki, Victoria Azarenka and, in the final, Maria Sharapova.Williams, who missed the 2004 Olympics because of an injury, was asked on Sunday whether it would be difficult for her to miss the Games.“In the past, it’s been a wonderful place for me,” she said. “I really haven’t thought about it, so I’m going to keep not thinking about it.”The top four American women in the singles rankings are eligible to compete in Tokyo. Sofia Kenin, Jennifer Brady and the 17-year-old Coco Gauff have all confirmed that they intend to take part. Williams’s decision opens a slot for Jessica Pegula. More

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      The Special Magic of Wimbledon Returns, Changes Included

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      The pandemic forced the tournament’s cancellation in 2020 and led to some changes this year, but much of its tradition is back.Serena Williams leaned back in her chair and thought.The seven-time Wimbledon champion had just been asked about the one thing she is looking forward to upon returning to Wimbledon for the first time since the coronavirus shut it down last year. Suddenly, Williams burst forward, as if she had just had an epiphany.“I love the grass,” Williams said this month at the French Open, though she also admitted that she hadn’t even practiced on the surface since she lost to Simona Halep in the 2019 final. “What I love most about it is just the cleanness of it. I just think it’s so chic and so crisp. That’s a good word: crisp.”Crisp may be the perfect word to describe the aura of Wimbledon. Those iridescent green grass courts are immaculately manicured. It is the only professional tournament that still requires its participants to wear logo-less, all-white clothing. The facilities, including a Royal Box that features signature purple-and-green blankets, oozes decorum.And it’s not just Williams who understands the significance of the only major still played on grass.Williams, a seven-time Wimbledon champion, serving to Simona Halep at the 2019 tournament. Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images“Wimbledon is something magical,” said Elina Svitolina, a semifinalist in 2019. “We know the rules are quite strict, and it’s going to be even more strict this year. But you’re just in white, and you’re in such a nice, historical venue, so the whole atmosphere makes stepping on the court an experience.”Now Wimbledon, which begins on Monday, is back, though it looks and feels quite different this year. Attendance is capped at 50 percent for the Centre and No. 1 Courts, while smaller show courts can seat 75 percent of capacity. For the semifinals and finals, seating capacity is expected to rise to 100 percent on Centre Court.There are also strict regulations regarding vaccination and testing protocols. All ticket-holders are required to show proof of Covid status upon entry, either in the form of two vaccination doses or proof of a negative Covid test within the past 48 hours. While moving around the grounds, all attendees must wear face coverings, though they are free to remove them while at their seats. The players have their own set of rules in place that allow them to be exempt from public quarantine requirements while also keeping themselves and the public safe.“This will be a Wimbledon like we’ve never known it before,” said Dan Evans, the British No. 1 in singles. “It’s obviously an amazing place to play tennis, but my overriding feeling is that it will be very different to what we know.”Because tickets are being distributed through mobile devices this year, some traditions have disappeared. No one will be permitted to camp out for spare tickets, for example. Because the players are required to stay at a designated hotel in London, spotting celebrities outside their rental homes in Wimbledon Village is gone. And for environmental reasons, the plastic cups adorned with pictures of strawberries for the traditional Wimbledon dessert strawberries and cream have been replaced with sustainable cardboard containers.As with other major championships this year, prize money has been redistributed, with more going to early round losers. This year, the men’s and women’s singles champions will receive £1.7 million (about $2 million), down from £2.35 million in 2019, but those who fall in the first round will get £48,000, significantly more than than two years ago.Other changes include players on all of the courts, not just the premier ones, being allowed to challenge the calls of linespeople and have them verified by Hawk-Eye Live, a device that uses 10 cameras around the court (though no linespeople have been cut as a result, as other tournaments have done). And there also has been the introduction of a serve clock on all courts.Like Williams, Roger Federer, an eight-time Wimbledon champion, is currently ranked No. 8. Christian Hartmann/ReutersSeedings are according to the WTA and Association of Tennis Professionals rankings, which means that the champions, Roger Federer and Williams, both now ranked No. 8, could meet the top seeds Novak Djokovic and Ashleigh Barty in the quarterfinals. In the past, Wimbledon has often deferred to past champions when making seedings.Simply adjusting to playing on grass — with its hard-to-grip surface and uneven bounces — will be a challenge for players, many of whom have not competed on the surface in two years: When Wimbledon was canceled last year, the few grass-court warm-up events were as well. This year, because the French Open was postponed by a week to allow for the lifting of more Covid-19 restrictions in France, there has been even less time to for players to make the transition.“Nobody practiced on grass because there was no reason to,” said Daniil Medvedev, who is seeded second. “It’s not going to be easy this year.”For most players, nothing is certain this year. Barty enters the tournament still nursing a hip injury that caused her to retire during her second match at the French Open. Halep, the defending champion, didn’t play that tournament because of a calf injury. She withdrew from Wimbledon on Friday. Dominic Thiem, the reigning United States Open champion, also withdrew, because of a wrist injury sustained earlier in the week.Naomi Osaka, the world’s No. 2 player, also withdrew from the tournament, citing a need for more time away from the game. She also pulled out of the French Open citing mental health issues. And Williams, still one shy of tying Margaret Court’s record of 24 major singles championships, has played a sparse schedule this year. She reached the semifinals at the Australian Open in February, losing to Osaka, the eventual champion.Barbora Krejcikova, the winner at the French Open, has never played the main draw at Wimbledon, but she is seeded at No. 15.When Rafael Nadal announced that he was pulling out of Wimbledon and the Olympics following a semifinal loss to Djokovic at the French Open, the most intriguing story lines at Wimbledon suddenly became Federer and Djokovic.Federer, an eight-time Wimbledon champion, has played just eight matches in the last two years and two weeks ago lost unexpectedly to Felix Auger-Aliassime at a grass-court warm-up in Halle, Germany.Novak Djokovic, the 2018 and 2019 champion, eats a blade of grass (a personal Wimbledon tradition) after beating Federer in 2019.Daniel Leal-Olivas/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThen there is Djokovic who, with his wins at the Australian and French Opens this year, is halfway to a Grand Slam. If he also wins a gold medal at the Olympics in Tokyo, he will accomplish the Golden Slam, which has been done only by Steffi Graf, in 1988.“Everything is possible,” Djokovic said after he beat Alexander Zverev to win his second French Open. “I did put myself in a good position to go for the Golden Slam.”Wimbledon is already thinking ahead. In 2022, the All England Club, which holds the tournament, will add play on the middle Sunday of the event, which traditionally was reserved for rest and rejuvenation of the courts and the players. The All England Club also recently unveiled plans to expand into neighboring parkland and create an 8,000-seat show court that the club expects to be ready by 2030.But for this year, people who treasure the tournament are relieved it’s back.“Wimbledon is such an anchor for all of us,” said Jim Courier, a former world No. 1 and current Tennis Channel commentator. “I think it will be rejuvenating for the sport as a whole. It’s going to be a relief that Wimbledon is back and going to be visible again.“Wimbledon,” Courier added, “is that perfect blend of the old and the new. They’ve gotten it right in so many ways. We missed it.” More

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      Serena Williams’s Difficult Season on Clay Catches Up to Her at the French Open

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      Elena Rybakina, the No. 21 seed from Kazakhstan, defeated the 23-time Grand Slam tournament winner in their fourth-round match, 6-3, 7-5.PARIS — There is not much left of the main stadium where Serena Williams won her three French Open singles titles in 2002, 2013 and 2015.It has been rebuilt and remodeled in recent years, adding a retractable roof and subtracting a great deal of direct connection with tennis history. It is an undeniably new era at Roland Garros, one in which Williams, 39, is no longer the overwhelming favorite, especially on the surface that least suits her power game.A defeat on clay is no great surprise at this stage, even against a 21-year-old like Elena Rybakina, who had never been past the third round at a Grand Slam event until this tournament.But the 21st-seeded Rybakina seized the moment on Sunday, often overpowering Williams in her 6-3, 7-5 victory in the fourth round on the main Philippe Chatrier Court.She had never played Williams, but like all the young and talented players on tour, Rybakina has long had a connection with her, the player who was a dominant force long before they joined the tour.“I was watching her matches on TV, so many Grand Slams,” Rybakina said, referring to tournament titles.Williams has won 23 singles titles. That is one short of Margaret Court’s career record, and she has been one short for more than four years now. She seems increasingly far from finishing off her quest.Wimbledon, which starts in three weeks, still looks like her best chance: a place where her remarkable serve, big returns and penetrating groundstrokes can still do major damage.“I’m kind of excited to switch surfaces,” Williams said. “Historically I have done pretty well on grass. I have done pretty well on clay, too, just not this particular season.”But the younger generation is rising on all surfaces and increasingly unintimidated by the great Williams, despite all her shrieks and roars and trophies. Rybakina looked like she might crack when she lost her serve at 4-3 in the second set, but then quickly stabilized. To watch Williams round by round at this stage is to realize that every match can turn into a perilous adventure. That knowledge emboldens the opposition, and it reassured Rybakina, who was born and raised in Moscow but now represents Kazakhstan, in part, because of the financial support that country’s tennis federation has been able to offer.“It’s difficult to expect anything, because you watch on TV and that’s completely different when you come on court and you feel the power and everything,” Rybakina said of Williams. “I knew that the serve was going to be difficult for me to return. She’s powerful, but I was ready. Then after a few points, I felt it comfortable, so nothing.”In fact, the most dominant server on Sunday was not the seventh-seeded Williams. Rybakina’s average first serve speed was faster than Williams’s: 106.6 miles per hour to 105.3. Her average second serve speed was faster, too: 85.4 to 85.She hit four aces to Williams’s two, and more important, if you are searching for the bottom line, she won 69 percent of her first-serve points to Williams’s 59 percent and 52 percent of her second-serve points to Williams’s paltry 41 percent.Those numbers do not mislead, and though Williams is rightly lauded for her ability to disguise the location of her serve, she often looked more bamboozled by Rybakina’s delivery.Williams also found herself at quite a distance from many of Rybakina’s groundstroke winners and lost the majority of the quick-strike points of four shots or fewer.“We watched matches of Serena, of course,” Rybakina said of her game plan, made with her coach, Stefano Vukov. “We tried to make her play from the backhand side more, just because she has an open stance. With an open stance and two hands, it’s difficult to move the ball, so I tried to attack this side. Sometimes I was stuck too much to the forehand. That’s why I was losing points, because the forehand it’s better not to even play there, it’s so good.”But not everything is as good as it used to be, including Williams’s movement. Serving at 4-4, she lost the first point when she retreated to the baseline and tried to get out of the way of a Rybakina backhand only to have it hit her racket frame. Williams looked mortified, bent forward at the waist and leaned on her racket for 10 seconds or more.“She plays aggressive, but also, I mean, it’s difficult for her now also after she has a baby and everything,” Rybakina said. “So I had to step in and just try to move and get some shorter balls to finish the point.”Williams has had some remarkable success since returning to the tour in 2018 after the birth of her daughter, Olympia. She reached the final of Wimbledon and the United States Open later that year and did the same in 2019. The bar is so high for Williams, but she has stopped reaching the same heights, particularly in Paris, where she has not been past the fourth round since her comeback.This was her second Roland Garros at this age, 39. Last year, when the tournament was delayed until October, she withdrew before the second round because of an Achilles’ tendon injury suffered at the U.S. Open. This year she won three rounds, which felt rather like a triumph for those who watched her struggle on clay in Italy last month.“I’m in a much better place than when I got here,” Williams said. “It had been a really difficult season for me on the clay, and although I love the clay, I was like, ‘If I could just win a match.’”She continues to love Paris, too, a city where she has long had an apartment on the Left Bank, even if she has not been able to stay there with her family during the last two French Opens because of tournament rules during the pandemic.Williams speaks some French and will always have three French Open singles titles and two French Open doubles titles. But those glory days on the clay look as much a part of the past at Roland Garros as all the buildings and courts that no longer exist.Bring on Wimbledon, where traditions die harder, but Williams, who does not intend to play a warm-up tournament on grass, had better hurry if she wants to crank back the clock to reach 24.The younger generation’s time has come. More