Williams, Serena

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Tennis

      Are We Missing Out When Athletes Retire on Top?

      by

      To witness the humbling of champions — and to see them endure it with dignity and grit — might be one of the great things sports has to teach us.A hero’s journey, ending in a wrenching farewell — sports historians will debate whether Roger Federer was the greatest men’s tennis player of all time, but few will deny that he was among its most dignified. Last month, the 41-year-old, 20-time major champion made official what had felt inevitable for some time: The ravages of age, culminating with a recent knee surgery, finally persuaded him to retire. A hastily arranged final appearance at the Laver Cup in London quickly morphed into a send-off for the Swiss superstar, a Festival of Fed. He teamed up with his friendly rival Rafael Nadal for a doubles match, a contest that felt mostly like an excuse to watch a legend take the court one last time. The raucous aftermath included an emotional on-court interview with a fellow great, Jim Courier. Federer’s current peers were there, all reverential, as was a teeming audience, eager to see him off. Was this the end, or merely the end of the beginning? Sportswriters are required to use phrases like “ravages of age” when discussing an athlete in decline, but truth be told, it’s a bit of a reach when describing Federer’s goodbye. Trim and suave in a royal blue zip-up and a signature Rolex (one of his longtime sponsors), he scarcely gave the appearance of a man facing down senescence — just a man acknowledging the fact he can’t go five sets deep with Novak Djokovic the way he used to. And while much of the celebration felt delightfully genuine and spontaneous, that’s not the same as saying it wasn’t calculated. To be an icon in the modern sports firmament is to give as much consideration to narrative as your average Shakespeare scholar, and scripting your career to a happy ending serves many purposes.A similar curtain call occurred a few weeks earlier, when the 23-time major champion Serena Williams finished her storied career with a spirited run into the third round of the U.S. Open, a tournament she first won in 1999. Williams and her older sister Venus have been fixtures of the American sports landscape for so long that it is at once impossible to imagine it without them and head-spinning to contemplate the length of their dominance. When Williams addressed the stadium after her last appearance, the assembled crowd responded with an operatic outpouring that exceeded even Federer’s rapturous farewell. (If your heart did not proceed directly to your throat when Serena wept and said she would be no one without her older sister, you either don’t love tennis or need to see a doctor.)For the aging athlete to continue grinding away is in some ways a noble act.Serena, like Federer, is 41 and considered by many to be the sport’s greatest of all time. Their playing days might be behind them, but each remains a global icon, and status as a global icon is a bit like a Supreme Court appointment: Once you have it, it’s your job for life. It’s also a lucrative one. The idea that a star athlete might be worth more money retired than active isn’t exactly new — Arnold Palmer’s career golf earnings were $2 million, while the bulk of his estimated $700 million estate was earned through endorsements long after his competitive days were over — but in a world crazed for both content and heroes, the stakes of making a narratively canny exit feel higher than ever. Legacy-building cannot be left to chance. Federer has already been the focus of multiple documentaries; Williams has been chronicled in a five-part HBO series and had her youth depicted, alongside her sister’s, in last year’s Oscar-winning dramatization “King Richard.” The incentive to make the leap from player to personality while still adjacent to the winner’s circle is immense.Roger Federer’s Farewell to Professional TennisThe Swiss tennis player leaves the game with one of the greatest competitive records in history.An Appraisal: “He has, figuratively and literally, re-embodied men’s tennis, and for the first time in years, the game’s future is unpredictable,” the author David Foster Wallace wrote of Roger Federer in 2006.A Poignant Send-Off: Wimbledon may have been more fitting. But the Laver Cup, which Federer helped create, offered a sensible final act for one of the greatest players of this era.Two Great Rivals: When players retire from individual sports like tennis, their rivalries go with them. Here is a look at some of the best matches that pitted Federer against Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.Tennis After Federer: The Swiss player, along with Nadal and Djokovic, helped define a remarkably durable period in men’s tennis history. Following behind is a new generation of hungry players, ready to muscle their way into the breach.This was not always the case — far from it. The edges of sports history are littered with specters like the aging Johnny Unitas, fecklessly playing out the string as a San Diego Charger, and Willie Mays, slumming as a past-his-prime New York Met. No complete biography of either man will ever be written without some significant reference to those sad and flailing years, in which they burned off parts of their legacy for a few final paychecks and a chance at adulation — the part where the great man, taking the field, commands his body to perform the old heroic acts and is betrayed, again and again, by those “ravages of age.” Personally, I am ambivalent about the much tidier exits of today’s greats. I sort of miss the tragic model. For the aging athlete to continue grinding away, even as their physical prowess begins to fail them, is in some ways a noble act of self-effacement, an abandonment of personal vanity, a repayment of the karmic debt of their natural abilities. We as a society currently stand at the intersection of modern medicine, baby-boomer vivacity and magical thinking, indulging in adult-adolescent fantasies of eternal youth, waving away the menacing creep of time. If sports is a metaphor for life — and it better be, for all the time it takes — I wonder if on some level we don’t do ourselves a disservice by watching our heroes bow out on a grace note. Parts of life’s ride are going to get ugly; injury, loss and defeat are coming for us all. To witness, in real time, the humbling of great athletes — and to see them endure it with dignity and grit, even as the outcomes carry them further and further from former glory — might be one of the great things sports has to teach us. Over these last few months, a miracle occurred that split the difference. Albert Pujols is 42 and in his 22nd season playing major-league baseball. For the first 10 years of that career, he was basically Babe Ruth — a hitter of such generational talent that it strained credulity. Over the second 10 years, he went from pretty good to mediocre to downright bad, and many a commentator remarked on how sad it was to see a once-perfect hitter break down. And yet Pujols persisted, catching on as a bench player with the Los Angeles Dodgers after being released by another team, and finally rejoining his original team, the St. Louis Cardinals, for one more year. It was, essentially, a sentimental gesture.But then something weird happened: He got really, really good again. His swing locked in. He started hitting home runs at his early career rate, passing 700 for his career, a huge benchmark in baseball. He led his team to a division title. It all came out of nowhere, the most romantic possible outcome for a player who had — in many people’s eyes — come to serve as a cautionary tale, an argument for getting out while the getting’s good.That’s one last thing about sports, and life: The difference between demonstrating resilience and toiling in self-delusion is not so easy to parse. Pujols recently revealed that as late as this June, he had become so dejected about his play that he nearly quit. It turned out, happily, that there was one last chapter to be written. It reminds me of a favorite lyric, from the band Drive-By Truckers: “There’s something to be said for hanging in there/Past the point of hanging around too long.”Source photographs: Matthew Stockman/Getty Images; Stacy Revere/Getty Images; Paul Crock/Agence France-Presse, via Getty Images; Greg Wood/Agence France-Presse, via Getty Images; Getty Images. More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Tennis

      The Void Serena Williams Left in Tennis Doesn’t Need to Be Filled

      by

      Tennis has long thrived on singular stars, no one bigger than Serena Williams. But perhaps women’s tennis doesn’t need one big name to be interesting.Serena Williams is gone from the game; at least, we think so. Given the sharp, competitive way she played at the U.S. Open last week, maybe, just maybe, she’ll end up coming back for an encore.Let’s take her at her word, despite the malaise that settled on the grounds at Flushing Meadows in the days following her defeat to Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia. Their three-hour match Friday night featured some of the most thrilling tennis played at this tournament in years.Now what? That was the question fans were asking over the Labor Day weekend, many of whom had bought their tickets just before the tournament began, gambling that Williams would keep playing and that they could watch her last great run. With her gone, not even the players who are left in the tournament have a firm grasp of who will take her place in women’s tennis.“I don’t know,” said Jessica Pegula last week, echoing a typical locker room sentiment. Pegula, an American barely known outside of tennis even though she is currently ranked No. 8, made note of the remarkable explosion of talent on the women’s tour, which features its deepest-ever bench, but lamented that nobody has been up for filling the Serena void.“It’s open for someone to step up,” she said. “That’s why you look at someone like Serena, dominant over several eras, and it’s pretty crazy.”Of course, tennis, like most sports, thrives on big names. On the women’s side, in the modern era of professionalization, the racket passed from Billie Jean King to Chris Evert to Martina Navratilova to Steffi Graf and Monica Seles. Then it was Venus Williams’s turn, and finally, Serena, who not only pushed the game in popularity and reach, she helped changed the way the game was played.“It’s hard to picture tennis without her,” Pegula added, dolefully.Steffi Graf with the U.S. Open trophy in 1988 the year she won the Grand Slam.Peter Morgan/Associated PressDoes women’s tennis need such a dominating figure to be interesting?Maybe it’s a matter of perspective. Rivalries and dynasties are great things. Many fans seem content to follow a small handful players or, in other sports, teams. The few players who win big and win consistently — like Williams and Novak Djokovic — are the ones whose stories take up most of the oxygen.But is there another more satisfying way of looking at sports?Is the N.B.A. at its best when the Golden State Warriors are in the finals, year after year, and winning the league title, in four out of eight seasons?Did we only care about the N.F.L. when the New England Patriots were bullying everyone in sight?Simone Biles had her well-documented struggles at the Tokyo Olympics, but how cool was it to watch Sunisa Lee emerge from relative obscurity and win gold in the all-around event?Serena Williams at the U.S. OpenThe U.S. Open was very likely the tennis star’s last professional tournament after a long career of breaking boundaries and obliterating expectations.Glorious Goodbye: Even as Serena Williams faced career point, she put on a gutsy display of the power and resilience that have kept fans cheering for nearly 30 years.The Magic Ends: Zoom into this composite photo to see details of Williams’s final moment on Ashe Stadium at this U.S. Open.Her Fans: We asked readers to share their memories of watching Williams play and the emotions that she stirred. There was no shortage of submissions.Sisterhood on the Court: Since Williams and her sister Venus burst onto the tennis scene in the 1990s, their legacies have been tied to each other’s.In men’s tennis, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Djokovic are pure genius. Bless the Big Three. But after reigning over the game for nearly two decades, each one of this trio feels past his due date.Despite Monday’s stunning loss to Frances Tiafoe, Nadal may play for at least another year. Djokovic looks like he has no plans to slow down until he is 70. Federer says he will give it one last hurrah when he can return from yet another knee injury.All to the good, unless, like me, you want some spice and variety and you like not knowing with near 100 percent certainty who is going to dominate every big tournament.Over the last several days, I spent time in Manhattan, randomly asking strangers what they knew about Iga Swiatek, the top women’s seed at the U.S. Open. The standard response was a quizzical, dumbfounded look. “Who?”Swiatek, a 21-year-old from Poland, won her second French Open in June. She also won 37 straight matches this year, the longest such streak in the 21st century.She has a compelling, all-court game. She is intelligent, contemplative, and engaging.But let’s face it, outside of tennis fans, in America, arguably the most critical market in tennis because of its size and spending power, Swiatek isn’t well known. She does not seem poised to fill the void left by Serena Williams. But that’s fine. No player will. The game, with its drama, athleticism and skill, should be able to attract fans.Iga Swiatek is the top seed at the U.S. Open. Will she be the next player to dominate tennis?Mike Segar/ReutersIt’s been interesting to watch the matches at Flushing this week, not only on the big courts but on the outskirts of this glammed-up tennis mecca — which, unlike, say, lush and intimate Wimbledon, has the look and feel of public tennis courts on steroids, with a looming football stadium stuck in the middle.Serena’s influence is everywhere. Remember how she spoke of “evolving” away from tennis? What a perfect word, because that is what she has done for tennis. She’s been the prime force in its evolution.You can see her fingerprints in every women’s match. The powerful, percussive groundstrokes hit from every corner. The biting serves. The aggressive, swinging volleys. The strength and speed. Virtually every player looks like they could be competing in the Olympic Heptathlon.Women’s tennis has never contained this much depth. Yes, you can watch the young and talented Coco Gauff, 18, ranked 12th, now into her first U.S. Open quarterfinals on Tuesday, and make the obvious comparison to a young Serena Williams because of their race — and because Gauff has steadily pointed to Serena and Venus for laying down the path for her tennis journey.It helps that Gauff also has the same sort of ambitious grit. As she came from behind in each set of her Sunday match against China’s Zhang Shuai, Gauff channeled Serena’s moxie, giving a Dikembe Mutombo finger wag, pumping her fists, flying from corner to corner to hit groundstrokes that echoed with a boom across Arthur Ashe Stadium.But throughout this tournament the grounds have been filled with competitors like the 86th ranked player in the world, Ukraine’s Dayana Yastremska — who, like so many other, credits Serena Williams for sparking her love for tennis as a girl. The shots that fly off Yastremska’s racket, no surprise, look like they’re ripping out of a cannon.Serena isn’t truly gone from the sport. She left a lot behind and remains part of tennis in a profound way. Her influence is all over the grounds.But that the void she left can’t be filled and doesn’t need to be. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Tennis

      Photos of Serena Williams at the U.S. Open Through the Years

      by

      It was hard not to watch Serena Williams. And who would want to look away? Since she played her first U.S. Open, in 1998, she played with athleticism and emotion that quickly drew in even the most casual spectator. She married sport and entertainment in a way few other athletes have. Even when she was not moving, she was far from still.New York Times photographers had their eyes, and lenses, on Williams since that first Open, when she lost to Irina Spirlea in the third round. It did not take long for Williams to figure out how to navigate the tournament: A year later, she won the title with a straight-sets victory against Martina Hingis.Photographers captured Williams’s highs and lows from crowded courtside seating to the upper nosebleed seats at Arthur Ashe Stadium. They had cropped in close and had discovered unique vantage points to create images that spoke to her power and grace.Williams played her first U.S. Open when she was 16 and walked off the court on Friday a few weeks from turning 41. There are countless images of her over the years, but when you look at images of her playing over the course of 25 years, her athleticism, intensity and sparkle are always in the frame.1998: Serena Williams lost in the third round to Irina Spirlea. The previous year, Venus Williams beat Spirlea in a dramatic semifinal match.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times1999: The second year Serena Williams played at the U.S. Open, she won it, defeating Martina Hingis in the final.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times 2000: Serena Williams hitting a backhand during a third-round match. For the second straight year a Williams won the U.S. Open. In 2000, it was Venus as Serena lost to a finalist, Lindsay Davenport, in the quarterfinals.Vincent Laforet/The New York Times2001: Serena Williams watched Venus Williams defeat Jennifer Capriati in a semifinal match. She lost to Venus in the final.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times2004: Serena Williams wore a biker outfit at the 2004 U.S. Open, but her quarterfinal loss to Jennifer Capriati, marred by bad calls, made the biggest impact.Uli Seit for The New York TimesThe next year, Hawk-Eye review technology was introduced.Uli Seit for The New York Times2005: Serena Williams, above, lost to Venus in the fourth round. John Dunn for The New York Times2006: After defeating Ana Ivanovic in the third round. For the second straight year, Serena Williams lost in the fourth round, this time to Amélie Mauresmo.Andrew Gombert for The New York Times2007: During a third round match. For the third consecutive major in 2007, Serena lost to Justine Henin in the quarterfinals.Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times2008: In a fourth-round match. Williams defeated Jelena Jankovic in the final.Uli Seit for The New York Times2009: Serena and Venus won the U.S. Open women’s doubles championship, a decade after they won their first one.Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times2011: Doing the splits during a third-round encounter against Victoria Azarenka. The Australian Samantha Stosur defeated Serena Williams in the final.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times2012: For the first of two consecutive years, Serena and Victoria Azarenka played competitive championship matches. Serena won the 2012 final, 7-5, in the third set. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times2013: Azarenka again took Williams to a third set in the championship match, but came up short as Williams won her 17th major singles title.Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times2014: Hitting a forehand during a second-round match. Williams won her third consecutive U.S. Open title, defeating Caroline Wozniacki in the final.Barton Silverman/The New York Times2015: Two matches from achieving a Grand Slam, Williams fell to Italy’s Roberta Vinci in a semifinal match. Todd Heisler/The New York Times2016: Going after a lob during a second-round match. The Czech Karolina Pliskova knocked Williams out of the U.S. Open in the semifinals. Santiago Mejia/The New York Times2018: Williams made another U.S. Open final, but lost to Naomi Osaka in a highly controversial final.Ben Solomon for The New York Times2019: Defeating her rival Maria Sharapova in the first round. Williams lost the final to Bianca Andreescu of Canada.Ben Solomon for The New York Times2020: With no fans in the stands due to Covid-19, Williams lost to Victoria Azarenka in the semifinals.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times2022: In a match that felt more like a final, Williams lost in the third round to the Australian Ajla Tomljanovic. Karsten Moran for The New York Times More

    • 175 Shares119 Views

      in Tennis

      What You Missed at the U.S. Open While You Were Glued to Serena Williams

      by

      In case you missed it: The defending women’s singles champion, Emma Raducanu, is out, and a few players not named Serena retired, too.The Serena Williams show has come to an end, quite likely for good in competitive tennis. Even if Williams continues to say “you never know” and her current coach Eric Hechtman and long-ago coach Rick Macci have their doubts.“As of now, I guess we could say it’s over, but in her own words, the door is not slammed shut and locked, right?” Hechtman said on Saturday. “I’d say there’s a crack open.”“Just my hunch, but I think she and Venus are still gonna play doubles,” said Macci, whose Florida tennis academy was the sisters’ longtime base in their youth. “They have two of the best serves in the world and two of the best returns in the world, and in doubles you only have to cover half the court. When the Williams sisters play together, it’s the greatest show on earth. Anything’s possible.”The Williamses are indeed full of surprises and enjoy springing them. But what is 100 percent clear is that they are both out of this U.S. Open and that Serena’s prime-time farewell epic will no longer be the mega-story that blocks out all the light in the press room (or at least the American press room).“It’s completely her tournament, in my opinion,” said Daniil Medvedev of Russia, the No. 1 seed and defending U.S. Open men’s singles champion.But there has been a great big Grand Slam tournament going on for a week in New York. Let’s catch up on what you might have missed:Last year’s fairy tales are not this year’s fairy talesIn 2021, two multicultural teenagers made just about anything seem possible in tennis (and beyond). Leylah Fernandez, an unseeded 19-year-old Canadian with roots in the Philippines and Ecuador, knocked off favorite after favorite to reach the women’s singles final. Emma Raducanu, an 18-year-old Briton born in Canada with roots in China and Romania, defeated Fernandez in that final, becoming the first qualifier in the long history of the game to win a Grand Slam singles title.But midnight struck early this year, and the carriage turned into a pumpkin in the first round for Raducanu, who lost to the veteran Frenchwoman Alizé Cornet, and in the second round for Fernandez, who fell to Liudmila Samsonova of Russia.There was no dishonor in either defeat. Cornet is playing the best tennis of her career at 32 and upset No. 1 Iga Swiatek at Wimbledon. Samsonova, 23, won two hardcourt titles leading into the U.S. Open.But the early exits certainly do underscore how wild and crazy the Open was last year. Truly.Sam Querrey was one of a handful of players who said they would retire after the U.S. Open.Vera Nieuwenhuis/Associated PressSome players are retiring and locking the doorWhile Serena Williams was dragging her sneakers and talking about “evolving away from tennis,” some of her lesser-known peers had no trouble being more direct, including two longtime American pros, Christina McHale and Sam Querrey.Serena Williams at the U.S. OpenThe U.S. Open was very likely the tennis star’s last professional tournament after a long career of breaking boundaries and obliterating expectations.Glorious Goodbye: Even as Serena Williams faced career point, she put on a gutsy display of the power and resilience that have kept fans cheering for nearly 30 years.The Magic Ends: Zoom into this composite photo to see details of Williams’s final moment on Ashe Stadium at this U.S. Open.Her Fans: We asked readers to share their memories of watching Williams play and the emotions that she stirred. There was no shortage of submissions.Sisterhood on the Court: Since Williams and her sister Venus burst onto the tennis scene in the 1990s, their legacies have been tied to each other’s.McHale, a thoughtful 30-year-old from New Jersey, announced her retirement discreetly after losing in the first round of the qualifying tournament. She turned pro at 17 and soon reached the third round of all four majors, peaking at No. 24 in the world in 2012.“I am so grateful to have had the chance to live out my childhood dream all of these years,” she said on her Instagram account.Querrey, a 34-year-old Californian with a laid-back manner and a power game best suited to fast courts, won 10 tour singles titles and peaked at No. 11 in the singles rankings in 2018, the year after he rode his big serve to the semifinals at Wimbledon. The All England Club was also where Querrey recorded his biggest victory: upsetting No. 1 Novak Djokovic, who then held all four major singles titles, in the third round in 2016.Germany’s Andrea Petkovic, also 34, had some big victories of her own and broke into the top 10 in 2011 after reaching the quarterfinals of the Australian Open and the U.S. Open. She came back from a major knee injury early in her career and became a hard-running baseliner. She has been a fine player but probably an even better wordsmith: writing articles and giving interviews full of wisdom and wit in German and English, as she did again at the U.S. Open after her first-round loss to Belinda Bencic of Switzerland.“I think I brought everything to the game that I had to give,” she said. “Obviously it’s not in the amount as Serena, but in my own little world, I feel like brought everything to it, and my narrative was done.”She may play one final European tournament to give her European friends and family a chance to help her say farewell, but she looked like an ex-player already this week with a beer in hand at the beach.“First day of retirement,” she wrote on Instagram. “Enjoying my six-pack while it lasts.”And maybe there are some advantages to retiring in America after all, despite Europe’s bigger social safety net.“Every American that I encountered and told them I’m retiring, their first reaction was, ‘Congratulations,’” Petkovic said. “Every European I told this, they were, ‘Oh my God, what are you going to do now?’ I have to say the last few days I’ve embraced the American way of looking at it a little bit more.”Iga Swiatek remains the favorite to win the women’s singles title.Peter Foley/EPA, via ShutterstockThere will be a new champion and she just might speak FrenchThere will be no seventh U.S. Open singles title for Serena Williams, but someone is winning their first. None of the women who reached the fourth round have taken the singles title at Flushing Meadows.If Iga Swiatek continues to rumble, she deserves to be the favorite. Swiatek is No. 1 in the rankings by a huge margin after a 37-match winning streak earlier this year that included three hardcourt titles. The new champ could be American: Jessica Pegula, the new top-ranked American, and the big-hitting Danielle Collins, who reached the Australian Open final in January, are both contenders.So is Coco Gauff, the 18-year-old American who is seeded 12th and reached the quarterfinals in style after defeating Zhang Shuai of China, 7-5, 7-5, and covering the court like few women have covered it before. But the player rising the fastest is actually Gauff’s next opponent: the 17th-seeded Caroline Garcia, a French veteran who has been steam-rolling the opposition.Garcia, 28, once a top-five player, has been back on the rise since June and became the first qualifier to win a WTA 1000 event when she took the Western and Southern Open title last month in Ohio. She is playing with near-relentless aggression, standing well inside the baseline to return, frequently pushing forward to the net and ripping her groundstrokes, above all her potent forehand. It is all clicking, and she is on a 12-match winning streak after defeating Alison Riske-Amritraj of the United States, 6-4, 6-1.“I’m afraid to get too close to you,” said Blair Henley, the on-court interviewer. “Because you are red hot.”Garcia’s signature airplane-inspired celebration — arms spread wide — seems quite appropriate. She is in full flight, but Gauff has beaten her in their two previous matches and will have the nearly 24,000 fans in Arthur Ashe Stadium behind her on Tuesday in what will be the first U.S. Open quarterfinal for both players.Should be a good one. Could be a great one.Victoria Azarenka of Belarus will face Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic on Monday in the round of 16.Cj Gunther/EPA, via ShutterstockWimbledon was a different worldIn the last major tournament, Wimbledon barred Russians and Belarusians from participating because of the invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. Open did not follow that lead to the dismay of some Ukrainian players.One week into this major, no Ukrainians are left in singles, but Russians and Belarusians comprised a quarter of the remaining singles players in the fourth round.Ilya Ivashka of Belarus and Medvedev, Andrey Rublev and Karen Khachanov, all of Russia, reached the men’s round of 16.Victoria Azarenka and Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus and Samsonova and Veronika Kudermetova of Russia reached the women’s round of 16. One other big difference from Wimbledon: Novak Djokovic, the men’s singles champion at the All England Club, is absent from New York because he was not allowed to enter the United States due to his remaining unvaccinated against Covid-19. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Tennis

      Serena Williams’s Magical Last Week in Tennis

      by

      Serena Williams left the Lotte New York Palace Hotel on Madison Avenue and folded herself into the back seat of a dark green Lincoln Navigator. She arrived at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center about 15 minutes later. Traffic’s bearable on Saturday mornings.Her five-person, one-dog entourage convened on Practice Court 1. With more weariness than joy in her face, and a bit of a gimpy shuffle in her step, she set down her orange bag. It held a Ziploc bag filled with clean socks and a pink skirt to wear after practice. She checked her phone, in a black case with an “SW” pop socket. Her black Nikes had a gold “SW,” too. She wore a wedding ring, the stone the size of a meatball.Sometime soon — maybe a couple of days, maybe two weeks — her tennis career would end. But not yet. There was one more tournament: the U.S. Open.A trainer smeared sunscreen on her face, then helped her warm up with elastic bands and stretches. There was little small talk.Would she miss mornings like this?“Honestly, I can’t wait to wake up one day and literally never have to worry about performing on such a high level and competing,” she had told Meghan Markle — yeah, the Duchess of Sussex and a good friend — on a podcast days before the tournament. “I’ve actually never felt that.”She began swatting balls to her hitting partner. Whatever morning and middle-age lethargy she had soon disappeared in an arsenal of sharp forehands and two-handed backhands.She was nearly ready. Serena glowed in sweat.A Time CapsuleLet’s agree to call her Serena, because only chair judges call her Williams. To fans at the U.S. Open, “Serena” was her last name and her first name was “C’mon.”The story started last month, when Vogue magazine published an essay in which Serena said she was “evolving away from tennis” to grow her businesses and her family.“I have never liked the word retirement,” she wrote. “It doesn’t feel like a modern word to me.’”Immediately, stories were written about her career and legacy, almost as if she had died. In New York, plans for a proper send-off were jump-started. The U.S. Open made a plan: Turn Serena’s opening match into a prime-time celebration. Fill Arthur Ashe Stadium with celebrities and a record crowd. Create videos narrated by Oprah Winfrey and Queen Latifah. Cue the tears.But then Serena invited herself back to play another night, and another, and another.At almost 41, she whipped shots and chased balls as if birthed from a time capsule. Then along came momentum, the elixir of the sports gods.Was Serena surprised? Hardly.“I’m just Serena,” she said, as good an explanation as any.And this is Serena’s New York story, seven days and a career in the making.Williams practicing in Arthur Ashe Stadium. Two days later, the stands would be full as she took on Danka Kovinic.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesDerick Pierson, Williams’s trainer, applied cream on her face.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesWilliams the day before her first match at the U.S. Open.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesJessica Wynne, foreground, shot video of Williams warming up. “I’m going to give my kids her warm-up drills,” Wynne said. “Then we’ll zoom in to catch her footwork.” Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times‘She’s Not a Superhero’As Serena practiced the weekend before the celebration, the most experienced member of Serena’s on-court entourage was Chip, a Yorkshire terrier and Toto replica, jaunty with a bow tie around his neck.Chip has made more U.S. Open appearances than most players in this year’s field. The dog was a constant sidekick when Serena tried to complete the calendar Grand Slam in 2015.But the rest of the crew came to Serena’s circle only in her twilight. It included coach Eric Hechtman, hitting partner Jarmere Jenkins, trainers Kristy Stahr and Derick Pierson (who doubled as Chip’s handler), and recent addition Rennae Stubbs, a multiple Grand Slam winner in doubles, bringing experience and levity.As Serena warmed up in the cool of morning, there were few witnesses. But a few feet behind Serena, hidden behind the blue gauze that covered the chain-link fence, a 36-year-old tournament volunteer named Jessica Wynne pantomimed Serena’s steps and swings. She danced to Serena’s on-court rhythm.Wynne tried to commit Williams’ movements to muscle memory and she recorded them on her phone. She wanted to show the moves to her 6-year-old twins, a boy and girl, back home in Michigan, just learning to play tennis. She considers Serena the greatest athlete ever.“No one has had more pressure on her,” Wynne said. “No one has grown with more grace. It doesn’t mean that she’s more than a person. She’s not. She’s not a superhero.”Soon the gates to the tennis center opened to the public. People ran — ran — to find Serena, like the early arrivals at Disneyland who sprint to be first on Space Mountain. They crowded into the bleachers and stuffed themselves behind the fence near Wynne. They nudged one another to celebrate their communal good fortune in doing nothing more than being somewhat close to Serena Williams.The fans were a full spectrum of ages and races. That’s New York. That’s Serena. There might be no athlete, ever, as popular with such a patchwork of humanity.“This is her! This is her!” a 37-year-old New Yorker named Randy Cline said in whispered excitement. He pogoed up and down.He and his wife pressed their four children, ages, 9 months to 12 years, close to the fence.“You don’t usually get this close to greatness,” Cline said. “I’m just absorbing it. I hope my kids are absorbing it.”‘She Never Settled for Less’The concrete-block corridor outside the players’ locker room is lined with framed photos of former champions. Serena resides in glossy color between Roger Federer, in a graceful follow through, and her sister Venus, smiling while holding the U.S. Open trophy.Serena Williams at the U.S. OpenThe U.S. Open was very likely the tennis star’s last professional tournament after a long career of breaking boundaries and obliterating expectations.Glorious Goodbye: Even as Serena Williams faced career point, she put on a gutsy display of the power and resilience that have kept fans cheering for nearly 30 years.The Magic Ends: Zoom into this composite photo to see details of Williams’s final moment on Ashe Stadium at this U.S. Open.Her Fans: We asked readers to share their memories of watching Williams play and the emotions that she stirred. There was no shortage of submissions.Sisterhood on the Court: Since Williams and her sister Venus burst onto the tennis scene in the 1990s, their legacies have been tied to each other’s.Serena is frozen in full grimace, teeth bared and white beads flying in her braided hair. The photo was from her first U.S. Open title, at 17. It marked her arrival, as a player and a presence.A few feet away, the real 40-year-old Serena was laughing with Taylor Townsend, a Black player in her 20s.How many of today’s players, of tomorrow’s players, owe something — inspiration, belief, a less-rocky ride — to Serena Williams? There would be plenty of tennis players if she never existed, but would they be these tennis players?Ten of the top 30 Americans in the latest women’s singles rankings are Black or biracial, none of them named Williams.“Sometimes being a woman, a black woman in the world, you kind of settle for less,” Coco Gauff, the 18-year-old American, said. “I feel like Serena taught me that, from watching her, she never settled for less.”It was the day before the tournament began. Townsend teased Williams for not returning text messages. Serena apologized and laughed, hard, something she does more often the farther she is from a camera lens.Fans did their best to catch a picture of Williams entering the practice court on the day of her match against Kovinic.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesChatting with Taylor Townsend in the player tunnels.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesWilliams arriving to practice in her signature pink skirt.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesIga Swiatek, the world’s top-ranked player, a 21-year-old from Poland, spotted her. She was nervous. The two had never met, largely because Swiatek was intimidated by Serena.“I wanted to say ‘Hi’ a few times, but it’s tough because she always has so many people around her and I’m pretty shy,” Swiatek had said a couple of weeks earlier. “And when I look at her, I suddenly kind of forget that I’m here as the world No. 1. I see Serena and it’s, ‘Wow, Serena.’ You know?”Chances were running out. Swiatek made her move.“So I finally found the courage and this happened,” she wrote on Instagram, with a photo of Swiatek and Serena with their arms around each other. “Congratulations on your amazing journey and legendary career.”A New Era of AthleteThe Williams sisters were outsiders, in obvious ways — Black girls from the public courts of Compton, crashing a cotillion of a sport. Their tennis success was filled with the “buts” of detractors — but the braids, but the clothes, but the muscles, but the outbursts.They were human Rorschach tests. The world projected and exposed its own biases onto Venus, then Serena. Venus knocked down doors; Serena barged through. She was the bigger, brasher and ultimately more successful one on the court.“I think people could feel my confidence, because I was always told, ‘You look great. Be Black and be proud,’” she told Time magazine in a cover story before the tournament.She also helped usher in a new era of athlete — the icon, the mogul, the brand. Like top athletes of this age, she maintains a curated persona, keeping a bit of glossy distance from those who cheer her. It is telling, of course, that her retirement/evolution was announced in her own words in a cover story for Vogue.Before the tournament, Serena rang the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange, alongside business partner Alison Rapaport Stillman, representing Serena Ventures, a venture-capital firm focused on minority businesses. She wore a dress that she later sold at her clothing company, S by Serena, for $109. Later she promoted her first children’s book “The Adventures of Qai Qai.”It was almost as if she was in New York for the next phase, not the last phase.And then she took the court.‘I Could Feel It In My Chest’Arthur Ashe Stadium buzzed like a hive. It was the last Monday night of August, maybe the last singles match for Serena. Dusk settled, bringing the anticipatory air of a prize fight and a record-setting U.S. Open crowd of 29,402.There were celebrities everywhere: Mike Tyson. Hugh Jackman. Queen Latifah. Former President Bill Clinton. Spike Lee, predictably. Dr. Ruth, less so.But the most important witness, at least to Serena, was in the players’ box in the northeast corner. Her daughter Olympia, three days shy of her fifth birthday, wore a miniature version of the black dress that her mother wore on the court.A poignant ode to Olympia’s mother dangled in her hair. It was braided and held strings of white beads. They were a symbolic bookend to Serena’s career.“It was either her wear beads or me,” Serena said. “I wanted to do it, but I just didn’t have the time.”Danka Kovinic, a 27-year-old tour veteran from Montenegro, ranked 80th in the world, had the fortune, good or bad, of drawing Serena in the first round. She was introduced first, to polite applause, then sat in her courtside chair and waited.And waited.First came a video tribute for Serena that brought fans to their feet. Then came Serena, racket bag over her shoulder, water bottle in her hand, buds in her ears that muffled the roar of the crowd.Williams’s dress was dappled in sparkles, meant to evoke the night sky. The lacy skirt had six layers, one for each of her U.S. Open titles. “But I took four out because it was too heavy,” she said.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesWilliams’s husband, Alexis Ohanian, and their daughter, Olympia, visited on the court.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesAfter defeating Kovinic, Williams paused to take a selfie with fans.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThe U.S. Open planned a tribute for Williams after her opening match whether she won or lost. She won.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesShe wore a cape-like jacket and black Nike shoes with diamond-encrusted swooshes. The laces on her right shoe had an ornamental tag that said “Mama.” The left shoe said “Queen.”Once play began, Serena got the first big ooh-aah-ovation when she lunged to scoop a Kovinic drop shot, deftly volleyed at the net, and then dropped back, with the movement of a dancer, to smack a sidearm winner.The play was at turns stirring and shaky, never uninspired. There was no sense that Serena was in a hurry or wanted to be anywhere else.It was sometimes quiet enough to hear the 7 train rattle nearby. It was sometimes so loud “I could feel it in my chest,” Serena said.Kovinic did not shrink from the moment. But the whole thing — Serena, the atmosphere — wore her down.When Serena won match point, she ran in place, overjoyed and relieved. Kovinic slipped out of sight. Serena was directed to stay. A post-match celebration had been planned, win or lose, without her knowledge.Olympia came to the court, in the arms of her father, Alexis Ohanian. There was Oracene Price, the mother of Venus and Serena, and Isha, one of their sisters.Billie Jean King, a spry 78, told of meeting Venus and Serena at a camp in Long Beach, Calif., when they were 7 and 6. She remembered fawning over Serena’s service motion that day.“Her serve is by far the most beautiful serve in the history of our sport,” King said.There was a video narrated by Oprah Winfrey. Then Serena took the microphone, moved by the moment.“Sometimes I think it’s harder to walk away than not,” she said.Serena Had a SecretOn Wednesday, the day before Olympia’s fifth birthday, she was in the players’ lounge on her father’s lap.“Tickle me, tickle me, tickle me!” she begged, and when he did, she squealed. She wore a sweatshirt from her mother’s collection that read “GOAT.” Nearby, Oracene wore one, too.Out the windows to the west, on the practice courts, Serena warmed up in the final strips of sunlight. Fans crowded around, but the mood was muted compared to Monday — less anxious, less celebratory. At the main doors to Ashe Stadium, there was no blue carpet. The phalanx of paparazzi was gone.Serena’s ranking was deep in the hundreds when she made the “evolution” announcement. Expectations in New York were muted. The U.S. Open would be a celebration, and probably a short one.But Serena had a secret.Despite not playing for most of a year and losing in the first round at Wimbledon and early in two August tournaments, she had privately practiced well all summer.And she had experience. A 41-0 career record in the first two rounds of the U.S. Open. A home-court advantage unlike any other. And confidence. Always confidence.Kontaveit felt the brunt of all that on Wednesday night.Warming up on Aug. 21.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesWilliams arrived for her second-round match to roaring cheers.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesWilliams won the first set, dropped the second, but ultimately pulled out the win in the third.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesFans could be heard both inside and outside Arthur Ashe Stadium.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThe match sizzled from the start. Serena won the first set in a tiebreaker. Kontaveit broke her serve to start the second set, and stayed stout to send it to a third.The chair umpire routinely had to hush fans who shouted “I love you, Serena!” between points or murmured in excitement when Kontaveit missed a first serve. The rules of decorum stretched, all in Serena’s direction.Tiger Woods, his cap spun backward, cheered her on. Venus was two seats away. Behind them was Anna Wintour, the Vogue editor, with her bob and saucer-sized sunglasses.Serena seized control and finished off a victory, 7-6 (4), 2-6, 6-2. Along the way, the celebratory mood shifted into an expectant one.The bracket showed that she would not play another seeded opponent before the quarterfinals, if she advanced that far.Serena described the “big red ‘X’ on my back” since first winning the Open. She spent parts of four decades trying to uphold a standard that she created. No more.“I don’t have anything to prove, I don’t have anything to win,” she said on court after the match. “And I have absolutely nothing to lose.”In a Moment, They Were GoneIt was Serena’s idea to play doubles with her sister again. If this truly was her last spin in tennis, it felt right to do it alongside her sister.Maybe there was magic left in the partnership. They were 14-time Grand Slam champions, never losing a final. Now they were a wild-card entry, added just before the tournament, infusing it with another titillating dose of Williams.The opening match against Lucie Hradecka and Linda Noskova of the Czech Republic, playing together for the first time, was placed in prime time at Ashe Stadium, in front of another sellout crowd.Serena walked out first, in a black skirt and black T-shirt. Venus, 42, as statuesque as ever, wore a green and white outfit and white visor. After each point, they slapped hands or fist-bumped, and then whispered strategy to one another while covering their mouths — afraid of doubles-hacking lip readers.At the net, Serena showed off her fast reflexes. Venus loped along the baseline chasing shots.But they lost a first-set tiebreaker, then fell behind quickly in the second set. Mistakes piled up. The crowd deadened. The sisters grinded back to 4-all, but lost the match on Serena’s serve.Venus and Serena embraced. In a moment, they were gone to an appreciative ovation — Venus with a quick wave, Serena without. And soon after that, they were driven back to Manhattan, separately.The doubles match represented the beginning of the end of Williams’s U.S. Open stay.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThe Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, battled hard, losing the first set in a tiebreaker.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesWith the loss, Venus was completely out of the tournament.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times‘You Got Me Here’This is where things began to turn. And this is where you will hear an answer to a Serena-specific trivia question, and you may have to double-check the spelling: Ajla Tomljanovic.“No one’s going to pronounce my name right,” she said later. “That’s going to suck.”For the third match in a row, Serena was pitted against a veteran opponent in her late 20s whom she had never played before. They were character actors plucked into starring roles in Serena’s big-budget production.Dusk came, the stadium filled and Serena came out in her caped robe, like a boxer. The scoreboards flashed GREATEST OF ALL TIME and only if you like underdogs did you like how this ended.The match was great theater, a passion play lasting more than three hours. Tomljanovic was as steady as a ball machine, set on high.She has been playing Grand Slams for 10 seasons and has never been ranked higher than No. 38. Playing in a floral dress and a red visor, she found that she could match Serena from the baseline, stroke for stroke.She received unexpected help from an unlikely source — Serena’s serve. Tomljanovic broke Serena three times while winning the first set. The crowd whipsawed from frenzy to disappointment, sometimes on the same long point.Serena nearly gave the set away after going up 5-2, but rescued it in a tiebreaker. But something was gone. Soon it would be Serena.The key number from the match was six. It was fitting, since that is how many times Serena has won the U.S. Open.Serena lost the last six games of the match. But on the way out, she fought off six match points. She ran and chased until she was out of breath. She backhanded and forehanded and overhanded and tried to fit a life’s worth of highlights into her final encore.It was 10:22 p.m. when she fired a forehand return, hammered another forehand, and then — in her final shot, moving forward just inside the baseline — hit one more, this time into the net.The crowd groaned, then stood and cheered. The ball rolled past Serena as she reached to shake Tomljanovic’s hand. Serena moved toward her bag, instinctively, then backed onto the court to wave in every direction. Tomljanovic applauded, too.“When it ended, it almost didn’t feel right,” she said.Serena was pulled into an on-court interview with Mary Joe Fernandez. That is where she thanked her aging father, Richard Williams, who has not traveled in years. “Thank you, Daddy. I know you’re watching,” she said.Serena looked to the players’ box and thanked her mom, and the last vestiges of her trademark on-court toughness melted away. She was no superhero. She was just a person.People sold Serena Williams merchandise outside Billie Jean King Tennis Center ahead of her match against Ajla Tomljanovic.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesWilliams and Tomljanovic went back and forth in a three-hour, three-set match, with Tomljanovic ultimately prevailing.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesWilliams thanked the fans after the match. “You got me here,” she said.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times“Oh, my God,” she said. “These are happy tears, I guess. I don’t know.”And then she called out Venus.“And I wouldn’t be Serena if there wasn’t Venus, so thank you, Venus,” she said. “She’s the only reason that Serena Williams ever existed.”Then she thanked the fans, all the ones who told her to “go” or to “c’mon” or who just lived their lives quietly inspired by this girl from Compton.“You got me here,” she said.Here did not last long. Soon she was gone to there, wherever there is, out of the lights and into whatever comes next. More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Tennis

      How Ajla Tomljanovic Faced Down Serena Williams and 24,000 Others

      by

      On the advice of her father, Tomljanovic channeled Kevin Costner to beat the six-time U.S. Open champion in front of a raucous, partisan crowd in Arthur Ashe Stadium.When Ajla Tomljanovic was a little girl, she asked her father about a prized photograph of him holding a big trophy on his head. Ratko Tomljanovic was a great professional handball player, winning two European Championships for Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, and was the captain of the Croatian national team; before that, he was a member of the Yugoslavian team.His daughter wanted to know where that shiny trophy was, because she had never seen it in their home. Ratko Tomljanovic explained that it had been a team award, and that he did not get to keep it. Unimpressed, Ajla told him that she would not play handball.“I want the trophy just for myself,” she said.So Ajla Tomljanovic chose tennis, and she is still striving for that big trophy, for a professional championship. She has shown the talent for it, though her nerves have betrayed her at times — what she calls “the bad Ajla.”But on Friday night, Tomljanovic, who is ranked 46th, demonstrated to herself and the world that she had the mettle and the shotmaking ability to win a trophy of her own. If she wins four more matches in the coming week, it will be one of the most coveted in sports.That night, Tomljanovic beat the six-time U.S. Open champion Serena Williams, 7-5, 6-7 (4), 6-1, in front of a raucous, partisan crowd in Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York to advance to the fourth round of the U.S. Open for the first time.“I feel like I belong here now,” she said.That was not necessarily what she was thinking in the moments before she took the court.Tomljanovic was nervous, and for good reason. Williams was her idol, and Tomljanovic had never played her before. She had never played in Ashe. In fact, she had never even practiced on that court. She had asked tournament organizers if they could find a time for her to hit some balls in the largest tennis stadium in the world at least once, but nothing was available.Then there was the matter of her playing the role of villain, of facing down nearly 24,000 fans, virtually all of them screaming for Williams to win, and millions more watching on television. It would make anyone a tad edgy.Ratko Tomljanovic, once captain of Croatia’s national handball team, gave his daughter advice on facing tough crowds.Matthew Stockman/Getty ImagesTomljanovic confided the anxiety to her father, who was happy that his daughter admitted to the nerves. Better than hiding them, he thought. Ratko Tomljanovic also knew about playing in hostile environments, especially in Europe, where handball is intensely popular and the stakes are high. He tried to calm Ajla by evoking the almost comical role of the hard-bitten veteran of scrappy handball matches — the kind of yarn he had spun to her and his other daughter, Hana, many times before.“Don’t tell me you are afraid of the crowd,” he told Ajla. “I played in some terrible places with 5,000 people booing and spitting, and one time the crowd came on the floor and there was a big fight. Don’t tell me it’s hard because some guy in the 35th row is yelling at you.”It was not exactly Mickey yelling at Rocky. It was a speech designed to lighten the mood, and it worked. Ajla laughed. “She doesn’t care about what I did, at all,” Ratko said, chuckling.But then he brought out another motivational tool. He mentioned one of his favorite movies, “For Love of the Game,” in which a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, played by Kevin Costner, reflects on his life and career in the midst of a perfect game.“But she didn’t know the movie, so I had to explain it to her,” he said. “I told her, ‘You have to be Kevin Costner today.’”In the film, he told her, the pitcher focuses explicitly on the catcher’s glove and ignores everything else in the stadium. Ajla understood, and she followed the advice with her own unique resolve.She blocked out all the noise, the roars for Williams, the indecorous cheers when Tomljanovic missed a serve, all the celebrities in the stands, the video tributes to Williams and her own childhood adulation for Williams, a 23-time Grand Slam champion standing across the net and playing as well as she had in years. But Tomljanovic was better.“From the first moment I walked on court, I didn’t really look around much,” she said. “I was completely in my own little bubble.”From the outside, as she engaged in furious rallies and traded sensational shots with Williams, it looked like the best Tomljanovic had ever played, especially given the circumstances. But she cited her fourth-round win over Alizé Cornet at Wimbledon in July, which vaulted her into the quarterfinals there for the second year in a row. Those results reflect her best performances in a major tournament, for now.Tomljanovic may have won Friday’s match in the set that she lost.Jason Szenes/EPA, via ShutterstockOn Friday, Tomljanovic, who plays for Australia, may have won the match in the set she lost. Even though she was trailing 0-4 and 2-5, she refused to give the set away, fighting all the way back to a tiebreaker, which Williams won. But it took its toll on Williams, 40, who had played doubles the night before, and it showed in the third set when fatigue took over. The key to it all was a monster game that lasted over 15 minutes.“I know how much I hate playing players that don’t give up anything so freely that you have to work for every point,” Tomljanovic, 29, said. “I hate playing players like that.”That day, she was the hated player with all the mental toughness and savvy. She said that she felt bad for Williams, and that she always identified with her because Williams was initially coached by her father and played alongside her sister Venus. Tomljanovic was also coached by her father and grew up playing with Hana, who played at the University of Virginia.After Ajla won, Ratko Tomljanovic sat quietly in the player garden, barely 10 feet from where Williams and a large group of family and friends gathered before leaving the grounds. He reflected on the mentality his daughter exhibited on Friday and traced it back to when she decided she wanted that trophy for herself, and when he took Ajla and Hana to a handball camp when they were schoolgirls. Ajla would never pass the ball. She would keep shooting until Ratko told her she had to pass.“She said, ‘No, no, Daddy, when I have the ball, I just go and score,’” he said.He saw a little of that again in Ashe. He also saw a little of Kevin Costner. More

    • 75 Shares189 Views

      in Tennis

      Serena’s Magic Comes to an End

      by

      After 23 Grand Slam titles, 73 singles titles and 319 weeks at No. 1, Serena Williams’s run at the U.S. Open ended Friday in the third-round to Ajla Tomljanovic. Williams, who has said she is “evolving away” from tennis, played her last match before a heaving Arthur Ashe Stadium. Zoom into this composite photo to see details of the final moment.

      Begin → More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Tennis

      Serena Williams Willed Her Way to a Glorious Goodbye

      by

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