In what have become the final three months of an athletic career that can be staggering to behold, Serena Williams has traveled to London, to Toronto, to Cincinnati and now to New York City. That’s what is known in the tennis world as a part-time schedule. That’s known to the rest of us as some serious air mileage.
This is how it is on the tennis tour. It is not like the PGA Tour, which might take you to Hawaii or, for those who want to hit all four majors, a single week in the UK, but otherwise is entirely a U.S. mainland enterprise. It is not like playing for the Lakers, where half of your games are in Los Angeles and the rest somewhere in the U.S. (or Canada).
Even flying private aircraft and staying in 5-star hotels, which a player of Williams’ wealth surely can, the physical demands of this sport can be relentless and brutal. This is the sport that chased three-time Grand Slam champion Ash Barty into retirement at age 25, with $23 million in career winnings and a dream to not travel the world, to not be away from her family, to not so very often leave her home in Australia.
Williams has defeated 14 different women in claiming 23 Grand Slam titles. Eleven of them were younger than Serena, but seven of those ladies beat her into retirement. Dinara Safina, victim in the 2009 Australian Open final, is just a few months past turning 36 but retired more than a decade ago because of a lingering back injury. Caroline Wozniacki, who lost to Serena in the final of the 2014 U.S Open, appeared Monday night on ESPN’s telecast of Serena’s opening match in this year’s Open. At age 32, Wozniacki has been out of tennis for two years.
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This is the sport that Serena Williams has been bending to her will since she was on the verge of her 18th birthday, all the way back in the 20th century.
In 2015, when Serena came oh-so-close to winning the Grand Slam, she played in Australia, in Argentina, in Southern California, in Miami, in Rome, in Madrid, in Paris, in England, in Sweden and then the familiar U.S. Open trail from Toronto to Cincy to NYC. She played 55 matches that year and won 53. Two of her four tournament defeats came when she withdrew. She lost only 23 of 130 sets in that calendar year.
It is not so easy now.
It happens to athletes in every game. That it has taken this long to reel Williams toward the ordinary – this much time, plus a pregnancy that took her out of competition more than a year, and the COVID-19 pandemic that disrupted this global game through most of 2020 – is difficult to conceive.
“I’m at the stage in my life that I’m not necessarily retiring. I’m just evolving from tennis,” Williams told reporters after her first-round victory on Monday night. “I do feel different. I think I was really emotional in Toronto and Cincinnati. It was very difficult. Not saying it’s not difficult now; it’s extremely difficult still, because I absolutely love being out there. The more tournaments I play, I feel like the more I can belong out there. That’s a tough feeling to have, knowing that the more you do it, the more you can shine. But it’s time for me to evolve to the next thing, because there’s so many other things that I want to do.”
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Williams has played four times in Grand Slam finals since delivering her daughter, Olympia, losing each time, although the last of those made her, at 38, the oldest women’s finalist in the Open era. Since having her child, she has collected more injuries while playing (achilles, shoulder, knee) than tournament titles (one). It is possible, if such a thing is possible, she has gained more fans through this process.
“I think when I walked out, the reception was really overwhelming. It was loud, and it was … I could feel it in my chest. And it was a really good feeling,” Williams said. “It’s a feeling I’ll never forget.”
Those who were lucky enough to hold tickets to the first night session at Arthur Ashe Stadium of the 2022 Open, and those popular, powerful or wealthy enough to secure them, cheered ferociously at every point she won, even those gained through a double fault by Danka Kovinic.
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In this sense tennis may be less cruel than others to the greatest athletes as they exit the stage. In December 1981, with Muhammad Ali just short of his 40th birthday, he unwisely took a fight against Trevor Berbick and was punished throughout the 10 rounds. There wasn’t a single pleasant moment beyond his introduction. Michael Jordan, at 39 in 2003, played 28 minutes of a 20-point loss in a meaningless game on a nowhere Wizards team and shot 6-of-15 from the field. In 1999, at age 38, Wayne Gretzky didn’t score a goal in any of his final eight games on a lousy Rangers team, including the final defeat.
Serena belongs in that paragraph, in the most important sense, but her exit is unlikely to resemble these. However long Serena lasts in this tournament, there will be dozens of points won on that particular night that will provide ample opportunity for those who recognize and appreciate her supremacy to revel in what she has done and what she still is doing, at least inside these next couple weeks. What an astonishing journey it has been.
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