To watch athletes perform at the apex of sport is a study in understanding perfection. They have their own laws of physics. They challenge convention. They show sport for what it can be. Art. They don't just merely make the impossible possible. They create poems while doing so. It's the ultimate marriage between excellence and perseverance.
Inside the cavernous Arthur Ashe Stadium on Friday night, one of the greatest to ever play any form of professional sport was at work. Trying to marry excellence and perseverance for the umpteenth time.
Serena Jameka Williams.
For two magical nights under the Ashe lights, she had turned back the clock. Would there be a fairytale ending? On Friday, she did what she does best. Rage against the dying of light against Australia's Ajla Tomljanovic, 11 years Williams' junior. She lost the first set but recovered to take the second in the tie-breaker. Even when she was down 1-5 in the third, she produced one final fight. That final game before the Australian won 7-5, 6-7 (4), 6-1 alone clocked some 13 minutes. Williams saved five match points, each of those being cheered by the crowd like it was Championship point. Tomljanovic completed the job to momentarily mute the crowd. After a brief pause, Williams raised her hand to acknowledge them.
Just like that, it had ended in the exact same venue where it all began for the uber-talented teenager from Compton, California. At the US Open in 1999, Williams, then 17, beat Martina Hingis in straight sets to win her first Major. Over the last 23 years since that September night, she didn't just turn water into wine. Her legacy isn't just what she did on a tennis court. 23 Majors, 319 weeks as World No 1, 858 wins on the circuit, 73 titles, four Olympic gold (one in singles and three in women's doubles) and 367 wins in Slams alone. With such a record, you can see why she has as good a claim as any to be 'greatest of all time, period', as Tomljanovic so succinctly put it in the post-match speech.
With Williams, though, it's necessary to zoom out the lens, to go beyond the numbers. Her legacy isn't the titles in her bedroom. It's changing the mindset of a very white sport. It's inspiring black kids to take up the sport. It's in rebelling against the system, knowing full well she will be looked at as an outsider. It's in supporting issues like the Black Lives Matter movement. It's in leading the fight for women's empowerment. It's inspiring scores of mothers.
US' Coco Gauff, who will play her fourth-round match on Sunday, offered this tribute on what Williams meant to her. "I think really just the way she was able to transform a sport that's predominantly white," she said during the media day last week. "That's something that as a little girl — even now — meant a lot to me.
"So, growing up I never thought that I was different because the No 1 player in the world was somebody who looked like me. I think that's the biggest thing that I can take from what I have learned from Serena."
"I think it’s just the way that she handles herself. She never puts herself down. I love that she always elevates herself. Sometimes being a woman, a black woman in the world, you kind of settle for less. I feel like Serena taught me that, from watching her, she never settled for less.’’
Naomi Osaka, who so famously beat Williams in the US Open final in 2018, had said her legacy can't be described. "She's introduced people that have never heard of tennis into the sport. I'm a product of what she's done. I wouldn't be here without Serena...," the Japanese had said before the start of the US Open. It's why her phenomenon will continue to stand the test of time. In a sport that has had historical under-representation among minorities, her story will show it's possible.
Serena's story began in Compton in the backdrop of 'homelessness, drugs, crime and gangs', according to CNN. Patricia Moore, a former Compton City Councilwoman, recounted a story to the news outlet in 2015. "They (the gangs) would surround the court (on Compton Boulevard)," she told the news outlet. "They wanted the girls to do well." They used to surround the court to ensure nobody messed with them.
The sisters — Serena's story is impossible to tell without Venus — soon outgrew those humble surroundings. Father, Richard, had proclaimed that they were destined for the top and he was right. Both of them turned professionals before starting to beat players twice their age. While Venus, older by two years, reached a Major final first (1997, US Open), it was Serena who first won a Slam (1999, US Open).
Even then, what was clear was the weapons Serena had in her arsenal. That big first serve and her sheer ball-hitting prowess from the baseline. Sure, she was blessed with the innate power to dismiss the best in the business but you also need to know how and when to use it. She had a preternatural ability to do both and that's what helped her ascend to the top of the women's game even before she turned 20. It also helped that she loved nothing more than a scrap, the will to chase down lost causes and fight past any obstacle in her path.
She combined both to devastating effect for the first time across an unbelievable 14-month period from 2002 May to 2003 July when she won five of the six Majors on offer. The first real challenge from somebody not named Venus came from Maria Sharapova at the Wimbledon final in 2004. The Russian did not just win 6-1, 6-4, she eviscerated Williams with a style and panache that took the breath away. "Wiliams had met her match," ran the headlines the next day. "This is going to be a rivalry for the ages," was another summary.
By the time the pair finished their final face-off in 2019, Williams had won 18 of the 20 matches, with Sharapova winning just five more sets and one more match since that Wimbledon final. This sort of competitive streak helped define Williams' career.
It also got her into trouble with officials (she threatened a line judge with asphyxiation with a tennis ball after she was handed a foot fault in the US Open semifinal in 2009) on more than one occasion. In the 2018 final against Naomi Osaka, she called the chair umpire 'a thief'. After umpire Carlos Ramos handed down a second code violation, she promised Ramos that he would 'never, ever be on another court of mine. You are the liar'. A full-blown meltdown meant Osaka won her first Major.
At the time, it looked like Williams would eventually win a record 24th Slam. Two more losses in finals followed, the last being at Flushing Meadows in 2019.
That final against Osaka, though, shifted the goalposts somewhat. It was, in hindsight, the beginning of the end. She gamely battled on before her final dance at Arthur Ashe.
At some level, it will be poetic if her final match is to be at Arthur Ashe. It has given her the highest of highs and lowest of lows.
Friday night, though, wasn't low. It allowed tennis fans and the wider fraternity to come together as a collective and join their hands for one final time to salute a colossus.