Williams, Serena

Subterms

    More stories

    • 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

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Tennis

      Serena Williams Loses in Three Thrilling Sets to Ajla Tomljanovic

      by

      As Serena Williams walked onto the court at the U.S. Open this week, the question was how the greatest player in modern tennis would handle the pressures of what she said could be her last Grand Slam tournament.She had looked rusty and slow all summer, but over the course of four days and two prime-time matches, it looked like the 40-year-old just might mount a magical, storybook run for a 24th major title.That dream ended on Friday night in a heartbreaking three-set loss to Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia. To the end, the almost 24,000 fans who packed Arthur Ashe Stadium shouted and cheered her every point as she fought against an opponent who was 11 years younger.“It’s been the most incredible ride and journey I’ve ever been on in my life,” Williams, wiping tears, said on court after the match.The loss, 7-5, 6-7 (4), 6-1, likely spelled the end of a 27-year career that forever changed the world’s perception and understanding of women — especially Black women — in sports. The highlight reels will show that Williams went kicking and screaming, saving five match points, blasting away to the end, making every stroke count as the match passed the three-hour mark.“I don’t give up,” Williams said. “Definitely wasn’t giving up tonight.”Williams has been the hottest ticket in New York this week and that continued on Friday in a match that was witnessed by some of the biggest names in sports and pop culture. And for long spells Williams delivered what they came for — the power and ferocity, the precision and passion for the game that have characterized her career for a quarter of a century.On another night, in another season years ago, it might have been enough. But on this night, a few weeks before her 41st birthday, Williams could not maintain the rarefied level of play that has powered so many of her victories. She served for both sets and had four set points in the second only to let Tomljanovic, who had never played on this court in the biggest stadium in the sport, climb out of a 5-3 hole in the first and second sets. She matched Williams’s power and edged her in both steeliness and accuracy, and also faced down a crowd that was entirely in Williams’s favor.“I just thought she would beat me,” Tomljanovic said. “She’s the greatest of all time, period.”Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesWilliams’s loss came on the same court where she won her first major title in 1999 at the age of 17. The fans this week came to Ashe to say goodbye, but with each match it was clear that no one wanted to see Williams go, not from the tournament she has won six times and not from tennis. Just 24 hours before Friday’s match, Williams had lost a doubles match with her sister Venus Williams. And as play moved into a third set on Friday, Serena Williams struggled to catch her breath and keep up with the pace of the match.Her play this week though could make people wonder if she was really ready to quit. Through three matches and eight sets of tennis over five days that few will soon forget, Williams proved that she could still be great on a tennis court. However, she has said that she wants to have a second child and cannot do so while traveling the world and competing.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 could always choose to return to tennis. But in an essay published in Vogue magazine last month, Williams wrote that she was “evolving away from tennis” — effectively announcing that she planned to retire. And in speaking to reporters after matches at the Open, she has not altered the plan.Williams has played infrequently since injuring her hamstring at Wimbledon in 2021. She lost in the first round at Wimbledon in June, and after her announcement in August that she would be playing her final few tournaments, a fortuitous run at the U.S. Open looked unlikely. In three matches in Toronto and Cincinnati knee tendinitis kept her from moving well. Williams, though, kept working, focusing on improving her lateral movement, and trying to regain her feel for the ball and the timing that allowed her to play with unmatched ferocity during a career spanning parts of four decades.Williams had a golden opportunity to take the first set after breaking Tomljanovic for a 5-3 lead. But she failed to close it out and coming up short appeared to rattle her. She committed a series of errors, hitting balls long and into the net as Tomljanovic pounced on her opportunity and finished off the set with a forehand cross-court winner that Williams barely moved for.It was a stunning end to a set that during the first eight games saw Williams, the 23-time Grand Slam champion, repeatedly send the big-hitting Australian backpedaling on so many points, moving her across the baseline and riding the energy of the crowd to gain the early edge.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesFor the first half-hour the match looked destined to follow the pattern of her first two, with Williams mostly getting better with each set. But two errors on one of her signature shots — her swinging forehand volley — and a serve that became unreliable and wobbly did her in. After 49 minutes, she was in a hole.Few players react to a deficit the way Williams does. When she is healthy and in form, Williams takes losing a set almost as an insult, an attack on an aura of invincibility that she will stop at almost nothing to maintain.And that is exactly what she did Friday night. Her grunts grew louder, her serves harder and more precise. She dove across the pavement for one volley, and stabbed and thumped others. She surged to a 4-0 lead, then stumbled briefly but regained her form in time to get to the brink of drawing even. She held four set points at 5-2, and served for the set once more at 5-3, but could not make the shots she needed to when she needed them most. Somehow, though, Williams came alive in the tiebreaker, pushing into the court and layering her shots so close to the lines and clinching it with a stiff backhand return of Tomljanovic’s serve that the Australian could not get back.The New York crowd, which has not always been in her corner, especially during some of her ugly run-ins with officials at this tournament, now smothered her with every ounce of sound it could muster, making the match as hard for Tomljanovic as it could.“So much support, so much love,” Williams would say later. “The whole crowd was really wanting to push me past the line. I’m so thankful and grateful for that.”Onto the third set they went. Once more Williams took an early lead, breaking Tomljanovic’s serve in the first game but then frittering away her advantage as her 40-year-old gas tank edged toward empty.Tomljanovic reeled off six straight games. In the last one, Williams ripped a ferocious forehand winner and unleashed a throat-busting scream, sending the stadium into a frenzy once more. And once more, Tomljanovic let the noise fall over her and set herself to the task at hand. It would take her six match points to induce that last error from Williams, and then with one final stroke into the net it was done.Speaking to the crowd through tears, Williams said her tennis career had been the ride of a lifetime.Karsten Moran for The New York Times“It all started with my parents, and they deserve everything. I’m really grateful to them,” she said. “These are happy tears.”She gave a nod to her sister: “I wouldn’t be Serena if there wasn’t Venus,” she said.She has said she planned to focus on growing her family and working with her venture capital firm. But as she played three rounds of tennis that conjured so many moments of the Serena Williams of old, even she had struggled before Friday night to say firmly that tennis was gone for good. Then she nearly did.“Clearly I’m still capable,” she said. “It takes a lot more than that. I’m ready to, like, be a mom, explore a different version of Serena.” More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Tennis

      Serena Williams Match Brings Russell Wilson, Ciara and Others to US Open

      by

      Serena Williams continues to attract celebrities and politicians to her U.S. Open matches. In attendance Friday:the N.F.L. quarterback Russell Wilson and his wife, the singer Ciara; the rapper Pusha T; the actress Heidi Gardner; and the former Yankees pitcher C.C. Sabathia. Williams is facing Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia.Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue magazine, was spotted for the fourth time this week in Williams’s player box. (Wintour was also present for Williams’s doubles match with her sister Venus Williams on Thursday evening; the sisters lost in straight sets.) Serena Williams has described Wintour as a longtime friend, and it was in Vogue that Williams announced she would be “evolving away from tennis.”Wintour wasn’t the only big name who has felt a magnetic pull to Arthur Ashe Stadium all week. Both the designer Vera Wang and the filmmaker Spike Lee were back in the stands on Friday night, too.Other celebrities who have come out to show their support this week include Tiger Woods; the singers Dionne Warwick, Gladys Knight and Seal; the actors Anthony Anderson, Zendaya, La La Anthony and Rebel Wilson; the models Bella and Gigi Hadid; the Jeopardy winner Amy Schneider; the former N.B.A. players Jason Collins and Steve Nash; and the comedian Chelsea Handler.Williams has refrained from being overtly political during her career, most recently deciding against commenting on the overturn of Roe V. Wade, but a number of politicians have been spotted at her matches, including former President Bill Clinton, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Tennis

      Serena Williams Prepared a Little Differently for This U.S. Open

      by

      Analytics, scouting first-time opponents, additional coaching input, new footwork drills and treating doubles like practice — so far it’s adding up to winning.Follow live as Serena Williams plays Ajla Tomljanovic at the U.S. Open.An underdog with the oddsmakers against the No. 2 seed, Anett Kontaveit, on Wednesday, Serena Williams will be back on familiar ground as the favorite against the unseeded Ajla Tomljanovic on Friday.The word is out, expedited by the roars in Arthur Ashe Stadium: Williams has worked her way with great speed back into form and into the third round of her final U.S. Open.It is remarkable but not necessarily astonishing, even a few weeks from her turning 41.“We can all ride a bike at an older age, and once the jitters are gone, you can even ride a bike without holding the handlebars,” said Sven Groeneveld, the leading coach who works with Bianca Andreescu and long coached Maria Sharapova.“It’s like walking for Serena,” Groeneveld said. “She has played tennis 90 percent of her life.”Williams has no shortage of positive memories to draw on from her younger years of pulling out of tailspins in a hurry.In 2007, she came into the Australian Open unseeded and ranked 81st, having played just five tournaments in the previous year and losing early in her lone warm-up event.But she soon locked in, defeating six seeded players, including the top-ranked Sharapova in the final.In 2012, Williams was beaten in the first round of the French Open by Virginie Razzano, a Frenchwoman ranked 111th. It was Williams’s earliest defeat to date in a major tournament, and it left her reeling and unusually open to change.She brought on a new coaching consultant, Patrick Mouratoglou, and though she played no tuneup events before arriving at Wimbledon, she quickly worked her way into devastating form. She won the title and then played what is widely considered the best tennis of her career to win the Olympic gold medal in singles and also in doubles with her sister Venus at the London Games on the same grass courts of the All England Club.That was, beyond doubt, a no-handlebars moment, but she is coming from even further back this time: playing no competitive tennis for nearly a year, arriving at the U.S. Open having won just one of four singles matches this season and ranked, strange but true, No. 605.“I just think because Serena is Serena and is a great athlete, that the more practice and the more practice matches she gets, she can play her way into an event,” said Kathy Rinaldi, the United States King Cup captain. “You’ve seen her do it in the past, and if you watched the match against Kontaveit, her movement to me got better and better by the third set, and I just think a great athlete can do that.”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.Some fitness coaches for other players were still shaking their heads on Thursday at their mind’s-eye images of Williams’s struggling to cover court at the National Bank Open in Toronto and the Western and Southern Open in Mason, Ohio: tournaments in which she lost last month in early rounds.“The change in a month is incredible,” said Maciej Ryszczuk, the fitness coach of the world No. 1, Iga Swiatek.But Williams said she felt her level in practice was often quite high as she returned to the tour, but that this was not carrying over into matches. The exception was the Western and Southern Open, where she was dealing with what several people had said was a flare-up of knee tendinitis: something that neither she nor her staff has confirmed.Williams during her first-round loss at the Western and Southern Open in August.Jeff Dean/Associated PressBut Eric Hechtman, Williams’s new coach, said the platform for the success so far in New York was in place.“The shotmaking was there, and the serve was there,” he said in an interview after her victory over Kontaveit. “She was actually moving well in practice, so in New York, we added in some more side-to-side running drills, and I think that’s helped.”So have the sellout crowds of nearly 24,000 in Ashe Stadium that are entirely in Williams’s corner.“That stadium is so big, and once you pack it in like that with a bunch of fired-up people, it’s a game changer,” Hechtman said. “It takes a little bit of time to get some rhythm, but it’s starting to come together. It was a great win against Kontaveit, but it’s still just the second round. None of us are getting carried away.”A loss against Tomljanovic would actually bring Williams full circle. She also lost in the third round in her first U.S. Open singles appearance in 1998 and has never failed to go farther in her 19 appearances since then: winning six titles.But the expectations are different this year. Given her recent level of play, the third round feels like an achievement. But the challenge as Williams goes deeper in the tournament will be to manage the load that comes with stacking up singles matches and doubles matches. She played doubles with her sister Venus at a tournament for the first time in more than four years, losing in the first round Thursday to Lucie Hradecka and Linda Noskova of the Czech Republic, 7-6 (5), 6-4.Unlike regular tour events, the Grand Slam tournaments allow a day of rest for women’s singles players between each round of singles, with occasional exceptions. Unlike the men, who play best-of-five-set matches, the women play best-of-three-set matches.But playing doubles on what would normally be a recovery day could still create a greater risk for the 40-year-old Williams. The last time she and Venus played doubles in a major — at the 2018 French Open — Williams withdrew from singles before the fourth round with a pectoral injury aggravated during a doubles match.Venus and Serena Williams last played doubles together at the 2018 French Open.Christophe Simon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMouratoglou, who had counseled against playing both events because Williams was returning from a long layoff, was displeased, and Williams had not played singles and doubles with her sister at a major again until now.But in what is most likely Williams’s final tournament, this sounds like a heart-over-head decision.“I feel like it’s been very important for her to be a part of this,” Williams had said of Venus. “She’s my rock. I’m super excited to play with her and just do that again. It’s been a long time.”Hechtman, who also coaches Venus Williams, said he fully supported the decision. “I think it’s great she’s playing doubles,” he said of Serena. “It’s not just the doubles, it’s the fact you get the reps on serves and return and play points and play with the crowd again.”Hechtman had not pushed for Serena to play doubles in her warm-up events.“This is a different situation,” he said. “It’s her last tournament. It’s a Grand Slam and you have the day off in between singles matches, and normally you practice on that day, so instead you are playing doubles. I talked to her a little bit about it in Cincy, and it was like, ‘You know what? This totally makes sense.’”What also made sense to Hechtman was the decision to play tournaments in singles heading into the U.S. Open, which Williams did not do before Wimbledon, where she lost in the first round to Harmony Tan, an unseeded Frenchwoman.“I personally thought we were very ready for Wimbledon,” he said. “The only thing we didn’t have was those matches. Even if she was a little banged-up in Cincy, I think those tournaments were crucial to getting to the level she’s hit here. You can’t say definitively they made the difference, but I would say they were very important.”Scouting and preparation have also been important in New York. She had not faced Danka Kovinic, her first-round opponent, or Kontaveit and has not played Tomljanovic either. Hechtman said he and Williams had been getting input on opponents from the United States Tennis Association’s analytics team, working closely with Rinaldi and David Ramos, a director for performance analytics.“It helps us see clearly how Serena’s strengths match up against opponents’ weaknesses, and we go from there,” Hechtman said.Hechtman said he also welcomed the arrival of Rennae Stubbs, an ESPN analyst, coach and former No. 1 doubles player, who has been providing counsel in New York.“They’ve been friends for a long time, and the more positive people — this is a very emotional state — the better it is,” he said. “I’m all for it. Look, I’m here to win so anything that’s going to help us get over that mountaintop.” More

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in Tennis

      Venus and Serena William Lose First Round Doubles Match at US Open

      by

      What was supposed to be a prime time, packed-house celebration of the Williams sisters at the U.S. Open turned into something rather less festive than planned on Thursday night.The rain cloud was the Czech doubles team of Lucie Hradecka and Linda Noskova, who unlike Venus and Serena Williams have not won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles together.In fact the 37-year-old Hradecka and the 17-year-old Noskova had never played a pro tournament together before until walking out into the cavernous confines of Arthur Ashe Stadium for their first-round match against Team Williams.But experience did not prove decisive as the Czechs, who clicked quickly, prevailed in a tight first set and then closed out their 7-6 (5), 6-4 victory and likely put a downbeat end to the Williamses’ phenomenal career as a team at this level.Exhibition tours and even comebacks may await, but this certainly felt like the end of an era for one of the greatest doubles teams in the game’s history. It came quickly after the Williamses had succeeded in rallying from a 1-4 deficit in the second set to get back to 4-4. And it came in an atmosphere that was comparatively subdued despite the sellout crowd of nearly 24,000: quite a contrast with the rock festival atmosphere at Serena Williams’s night singles matches in this year’s tournament as she has made a stirring run to the third round in her farewell U.S. Open.Serena Williams at the U.S. OpenThe U.S. Open could be the tennis star’s last professional tournament after a long career of breaking boundaries and obliterating expectations.A Magical Run: As her successes on the field prove, Serena Williams did not come to New York to receive a ceremonial send-off, but to put her best on the line against the world’s finest players.In the Player’s Box: Fans at Arthur Ashe Stadium have been catching glimpses of her family and entourage. Here is a look at who has been in attendance to support her.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 Field: Since Williams and her sister Venus burst onto the tennis scene in the 1990s, their legacies have been tied to one another.But though Serena Williams was often effective and decisive on Thursday night, she could not hold serve to keep the sisters in the match at 4-5. At 15-40, Hradecka poached and knocked away a backhand volley winner to close out the victory, and the sisters were soon packing up in a hurry and exiting the court without an on-court interview (or signing autographs despite all the souvenir balls being extended in their direction as they headed for the tunnel).Lucie Hradecka and Linda Noskova had never played together in a pro tournament before but managed to win.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThe Czechs ended up with the floor and the interview with ESPN analyst Mary Joe Fernandez.“I’m still in shock that we won because played the first time with each other,” Hradecka said, addressing the crowd, which seemed rather stunned as well. “I think we did a very good job, and I’m so sorry for you that we beat them, but we are so happy we did it.”Though the evening did not deliver the anticipated enchantment (unless you were Czech), it was not entirely bereft of pomp and circumstance. Before the sisters took the court, a video tribute was played on the big screens inside the stadium, showing footage of them through the decades. But there was no post-match ceremony planned, win or lose, and the sisters did not look much in the mood for public speaking after their straight-sets defeat and even declined to give a news conference, which has not been unusual for them in 2022.If this was indeed the last time the fabulous Williams sisters share the same court in an official match, it was surely not the way they, or just about anybody else, envisaged it. Their careers have been so routinely cinematic, full of surprise twists and revivals, that a straightforward opening-round defeat seems out of place in the story arc.But pro tennis is a sport, not scripted drama, and the anticlimax takes nothing away from their collective achievements. The Williams sisters were quality over quantity. They rarely played together on tour, restricting most of their appearances to the majors and the Olympics. But their strike rate was phenomenal, particularly when they reached a championship match.They were 14-0 in Grand Slam women’s doubles finals and 3-0 in Olympic gold-medal matches together. That is a statistic that will be noted (and tweeted) for years to come, and though it was a downer of a finish, it was still a fitting, full-circle place to finish.The Williamses played in Ashe Stadium the year that it opened in 1997, with Venus reaching the singles final as an unseeded 17-year-old and 15-year-old Serena making her Grand Slam debut in doubles with Venus. They had white beads in their hair and braces on their teeth, and though they were dynamic and exuberant, they were beaten in the first round by Jill Hetherington and Kathy Rinaldi, who would later coach both sisters as the captain for the United States’ team in the Billie Jean King Cup.There was a video tribute played on the stadium big screens before the match, but no post-match ceremony.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times“They’re both such different personalities but they’re both just such tremendous champions,” said Rinaldi, who was back in Ashe Stadium on Thursday night.The sisters went on to win two U.S. Open titles together but had not played together at a major since the 2018 French Open. But at Serena’s request, they put the band back together in New York. Serena, who turns 41 this month, has announced her intention to “evolve away” from tennis sometime after the U.S. Open, while Venus, 42, has remained cryptic about her own retirement and evolutionary plans.“I can’t speak for Venus or what exactly her plans are,” said Eric Hechtman, who coaches both Williams sisters. “But you know they are both strong women and both doing it their way. Serena, with the Vogue article, did it on her terms and in her fashion, and whenever Venus decides she’s not going to play tennis anymore, she’ll do it her way. People might say in their minds she got lost in the shuffle here, but whatever way she does it is the way she wants to do it. They are different people with different objectives, both staying true to who they are.”The U.S. Open organizers did not hesitate to capitalize on the moment, opening a night session with a doubles match for the first time since Sept. 3, 2012, when the Williams sisters faced Nadia Petrova and Maria Kirilenko in a third-round match.Perhaps it was foreshadowing that the sisters lost that one in straight sets, too, and with Venus’s elimination in the first round of singles, there is only one Williams left in this U.S. Open. Serena will be back on Ashe Stadium for a night session on Friday night to face the unseeded Australian Ajla Tomljanovic, who joked that she was planning on bringing earplugs to block out the roars.No such measures would have been necessary on Thursday. Rarely have so many U.S. Open fans been so quiet after sundown. More

    • 75 Shares189 Views

      in Tennis

      How Do Doubles Teams Partner Up?

      by

      For some players, finding a doubles partner is easy — just ask a friend. (Or in the case of Serena and Venus Williams, a sibling.)That’s been the case for the Aussies, Nick Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis, known as the Special Ks. The duo are close friends who have been playing doubles together since they were boys.Together they won the doubles boys final at Wimbledon in 2013, and since then, they’ve won a number of doubles titles together, including at this year’s Australian Open and the Atlanta Open.Other players, however, have to go out on limb to find a partner. In some cases, that might mean taking publicly to social media or sliding into the DMs.Before Wimbledon this year, Coco Gauff, 18-year-old American, took to Twitter to search for a partner for the mixed doubles draw.Serena Williams at the U.S. OpenThe U.S. Open could be the tennis star’s last professional tournament after a long career of breaking boundaries and obliterating expectations.A Magical Run: As her successes on the field prove, Serena Williams did not come to New York to receive a ceremonial send-off, but to put her best on the line against the world’s finest players.In the Player’s Box: Fans at Arthur Ashe Stadium have been catching glimpses of her family and entourage. Here is a look at who has been in attendance to support her.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 Field: Since Williams and her sister Venus burst onto the tennis scene in the 1990s, their legacies have been tied to one another.“Who wants to play mixed at wimby,” Gauff said in tweet.Jack Sock, the 29-year-old American, responded to Gauff’s post, and said, “We’d be a decent team.”The two advanced to the semifinals before losing in three sets.Others have had even more luck on social media. Before the French Open this year, Wesley Koolhof of the Netherlands sent a direct message to Ena Shibahara of Japan to ask if she’d be interested in playing mixed doubles. The two had never met before, but they went on to win the title.Bethanie Mattek-Sands, an American professional tennis player who was formerly No. 1 in doubles, said she has played with a lot of friends throughout her career. “I feel like that makes doubles that much more fun, you’re out there with a buddy and then you just figure out what your strengths are as a team and go from there,” she said.But overall, finding a doubles partner “can be pretty random,” Mattek-Sands said. “You can talk to a friend, send a text and just be like, ‘Hey, do you have a partner for this tournament, that tournament?”How long a team stays together really varies, Mattek-Sands said: Some players prefer to play with the same person all year because they can compete as a team in the year-end championships. Others like to play for clay-court season or the hardcourt season. Sometimes a match up is just a one off.Some players just look at the rankings of other players, but “most of the time it’s friends texting friends or coaches texting other coaches to see if their player already has a partner,” Mattek-Sands said.Before this year, it’s been a while since either of the Williams sisters have played doubles. Venus Williams lasted played at the French Open last year with Gauff. And before this year, Serena Williams last played doubles a tournament in New Zealand in 2020 with Caroline Wozniacki.To play in this year’s women’s doubles draw, the Williams sisters were awarded a wild card from the U.S. Open.The Williams sisters won the U.S. Open doubles tournament together in 1999 and 2009. The sisters have won 14 Grand Slam titles together, most recently at Wimbledon in 2016. They last played doubles at the U.S. Open in 2014, and at any Grand Slam tournament in 2018.“I think you’ll know if Venus and Serena are playing well by how they are serving and then putting the pressure on that second ball,” said Mattek-Sands, who has competed in doubles against the Williams sisters. “We know that they can both hit big serves, but how is their partner at the net handling that? I think if they can put a lot of pressure on the returners, they’re going to be doing really well.” More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Tennis

      Serena Williams US Open Tickets demand Keeps Going Up

      by

      The further Serena Williams advances into the U.S. Open, the more tickets cost to see her.For Williams’s doubles match with her sister Venus on Thursday in Arthur Ashe Stadium, the cheapest seats available for resale on Ticketmaster were well over $340 each in the nosebleeds.Those who want a better view of the Williams sisters will need to pay substantially more. Resale tickets for Thursday in the midlevel of Arthur Ashe were selling for about $1,000 and up as of Thursday, and tickets in the lowest level of the stadium were selling for more than $7,500 each.For Williams’s third round singles match against Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia on Friday night, tickets were north of $500 for the cheapest seats. Tickets in the midlevel of Ashe were selling for about $3,000, and more than $9,000 in the lowest level of the stadium.Williams is having an obvious effect on ticket prices, according to Logitix, a ticketing technology company. Before she won her second-round match against Anett Kontaveit on Wednesday, the cheapest tickets for a Friday night match in Arthur Ashe were $160, then jumped to $450 after Williams won, according to Logitix. Tickets in the midlevel of Ashe before she won were selling for $405, then shot up to $1,530. Courtside tickets were going for $805 before the win and $3,500 after the win.While the final is still more than a week away, with several rounds in between, tickets for the women’s final are also up. Those who looked for tickets to the Sept. 10 final before Williams announced she planned to retire could have found some tickets for about $150. Since Williams has advanced to the third round, the cheapest tickets for the women’s final have now doubled, to about $300 on Ticketmaster. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Tennis

      Serena Williams’s Magical Run at the US Open Isn’t Over Yet

      by

      The U.S. Open threw the closest thing to a farewell celebration that Serena Williams would allow for her opening-round match Monday night. But if a party was all that the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion wanted, she could have thrown herself one and skipped all those hours of sweat on the hard courts back home in Florida.Williams did not come to New York simply for a ceremonial send-off, to listen to another series of elegies about how she has changed this sport and so much else, how she has broken down barriers and paved the way for the next generation of Black tennis stars and female athletes, and the one after that, too. She knew all of that, better than anyone.There is another legacy that Williams possesses as much as all the others — as one of the world’s great competitors. And she came to New York to compete in a Grand Slam tournament, seemingly her final one, to once more put her best on the line against the finest players in the world on the sport’s biggest stage.She got that and more on Wednesday night as she won, 7-6(4) 2-6, 6-2, outlasting Anett Kontaveit of Estonia, the world’s second-ranked player, an opponent who, like Williams, loves nothing more than blasting tennis balls as she tries to overwhelm whoever is standing on the other side of the net.If that first appearance two nights earlier was about posterity and sweet send-offs, about a former U.S. president and music and movie stars coming out to see and be seen, round two was about doing everything possible to win a tennis match in front of a whole new gallery of boldface names, like Tiger Woods, who sat in Williams’s box, and Zendaya, and some 23,000 other very partial observers at Arthur Ashe Stadium.“There’s still a little left in me,” she said on the court when it was done.“I love a challenge, I love rising to the challenge.”Williams will face the unseeded Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia in the third round on Friday, and in this tournament she feels as though she has nothing to lose, after a career of having a target on her back.“I’m having fun, I’m enjoying it,” Williams said.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesNo matter who prevailed, this was never going to be a match with much subtlety. It was a showdown between two players who, when they are on, are among the best ball-strikers in the world, and two players at the opposite ends of the sport.Serena Williams at the U.S. OpenThe U.S. Open could be the tennis star’s last professional tournament after a long career of breaking boundaries and obliterating expectations.A Magical Run: As her successes on the field prove, Serena Williams did not come to New York to receive a ceremonial send-off, but to put her best on the line against the world’s finest players.In the Player’s Box: Fans at Arthur Ashe Stadium have been catching glimpses of her family and entourage. Here is a look at who has been in attendance to support her.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 Field: Since Williams and her sister Venus burst onto the tennis scene in the 1990s, their legacies have been tied to one another.In front of another capacity crowd, one of them, assuming she keeps her word, was playing to extend the greatest career in modern tennis, and to show her daughter, Olympia, just what she is capable of. Olympia was turning 5 on Thursday and showed up to this tournament in the iconic beads her mother wore the first time she began to rule this sport on this same stage.The other was attempting to get one thing that every young player wants — the chance to tell her grandchildren that on a magical night in the biggest stadium in the sport, she beat the greatest player of all time.Ultimately, a battle like that, especially on this court, was going to be better than any tribute video even her friend Spike Lee, the award-winning filmmaker, could make. And he made a pretty good one that welcomed Williams, in her bedazzled shoes and dress and hair and warm-up jacket, onto the court once more. Wouldn’t it?“I’ve grown up watching her win so many Grand Slams,” said Kontaveit, 26. “I always remember how fiercely she competed for every point.”This idea, that Williams could somehow turn what two weeks ago was shaping up to be one ceremonial goodbye match into top-level sport, began to take shape in the last games of her Monday-night win, when she started rolling those patented forehands and surging forward for those patented swinging volleys. Suddenly Danka Kovinic of Montenegro was like so many other overmatched first-round victims during the height of Williams’s powers.But for a few shaky swings early on, Williams essentially picked up where she had left off, reeling off deep forehands that had Kontaveit backpedaling and crushing serves that darted onto the lines.She hustled into the corners to dig out shots with swings of desperation. She brought the sound effects, too, the warrior grunts, screams of “Come on!” and sneakers screeching across the pavement on every pivot and twist.Williams finally notched the first service break in the ninth game, on her sixth break point, sending a crowd that had been revving up all night into its first eruption. But Williams frittered the prosperity and failed to serve out the set.Two games later, the players headed into a tiebreaker that stayed even until Williams grabbed a 5-3 lead as Kontaveit netted a drop shot. A service winner got Williams to set point, and an ace clinched it, sending a roar up through the open rectangle of the Ashe roof.Kontaveit is not known as the steeliest of competitors, especially in the biggest tournaments. She has made the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam tournament just once.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesMaybe everyone in the building wanted her to go away for the night, but Kontaveit was having none of it. Instead she pounced, breaking Williams’s serve three times to send the match to a decisive third set. An awkward murmur rolled around the stadium as Williams headed off the court for a brief bathroom break.For Williams, there was nothing awkward about it all. This sort of competition is what she came for, what she has been doing since she was a little girl, and the thing that makes her so ambivalent about leaving the sport and what she will miss most. She can still hang with the best even after playing just five matches in 14 months entering Wednesday.And that is exactly what she did, and then some. Maybe if Williams and Kontaveit had their last set unfold on some random tennis court in an empty park, things might have gone another way. But it didn’t. Elite competition against a magical backdrop almost never does, and Williams, a star made for the bright lights, probably would not have much use for it if it did.Kontaveit gave her very little, other than a few short serves that Williams jumped on to notch two early service breaks on her way to a 4-1 lead. Williams had to take everything else, her chest and shoulders rising and falling as she tried to catch her breath between points against an opponent who was never going to go away on her own.Serving at 4-2 with a point to win the game after nearly letting Kontaveit draw even, Williams sent a topspin lob that caught the back of the baseline and sent Kontaveit to the back wall, barely able to get her own lob back. Williams met it mid-air in the middle of the court for one more swinging volley winner to get to 5-2. It brought on what would be the second-loudest roar of the night.There was one more big one to come Wednesday, a few actually as she sat on her chair and soaked it all in. It looks like more are on the way.This is what she came for. More