t wasn’t Bjorn Borg dropping to his knees after winning Wimbledon or a sorrow-filled Pete Sampras weeping on court with thoughts of his stricken coach.

No, it was merely a fleeting moment in the fourth round of the fourth most important major. But deep into a tense slugfest with rising Serb Jelena Jankovic (who had whipped her bad their last time out) the much maligned Serena Williams unleashed a brilliantly angled, on-the-run, crosscourt backhand pass that all but wrapped up the match and helped propel her on her improbable run to the Australian title. Williams’ response was a fearsome, straight from the gut, every-fiber-of-her-being roar—an unfettered primal scream.

In a flash, the warrior—flush with adrenaline, eyes on fire—had unleashed a muscular, affirmation of will from the depth of her being unlike any we’d ever seen in tennis.

The magic (or is it poetry?) of sports is its range of emotion and in tennis we celebrate ample intensity. Most every Slam, the Davis Cup or the NCAA championships, inevitably delivers. If, over the year, tennis fans craved emotion, all they had to do was dial in Lleyton (“C’mon!”) Hewitt, Jimmy (“that’s what the people want, that’s what the people will get”) Connors or John (“you cannot be serious”) McEnroe.

Still, Serena’s roar was different. Getty Images’ Cameron Spencer captured it all—such a searing expression—in one singular, fist-pumping shot.

Tennis photography is crowded with memorable photos: Monica Seles in shock after being stabbed, Connors’ fist pump at the U.S. Open, Agassi’s moist farewell, Yannick Noah hugging his dad after the French Open final, Jana Novotna weeping on the Duchess of Kent’s shoulder following her Wimbledon choke, Venus’ joyous Wimbledon leap, or Arthur Ashe—deep, reflective and expressive of so much character.

Still, Cameron’s picture stands apart. In my 44 years of covering tennis, it was the most compelling photo I’d seen. Still, we were hesitant to put it on our March cover. After all, the unsettling picture was more than intense and demanding. Plus, there were plenty of other, far more benign options that expressed Serena’s athleticism and joy.

Nonetheless, after many a tiresome debate, we pulled the trigger. Then, predictably, once the issue came out, the phone began to ring. “Couldn’t you have gone with something else?” one Contra Costa housewife asked. “There are so many other pretty pictures of Serena.”

E-mailer Tanya Payne asserted, “There is bias against Serena Williams, based on the most unflattering cover I’ve seen in a long time…Tennis fans know bias when they see it and we also know about Adobe PhotoShop [which we did not use] when we see it. What a cheap shot. Is Inside Tennis in the tabloid business?…What a disappointment…perhaps this will be swept under the rug, which would be expected from people who would do such a thing in the first place.”

Others linked the cover photo with my rather outside-the-box-column that compared Serena and Hillary. “People dislike Hillary and Serena,” contended San Diego’s Fred Burton. “Your cover of Serena highlights one of the reasons why. She should be in the ring of fighting… We fans pull for the underdog (which is any opponent to Serena, with her obvious overwhelming physical strength). Also, Serena carries that ever-present whininess that Navratilova always had—the attitude that if she loses, it’s someone else’s fault. Serena has the power. Hillary wants the power. Both wear it badly.”

In the end our (“this ain’t no coffee table image”) cover has an unrelenting presence. IT managing editor Matthew Cronin kidded that he tucked his copy away from his kids and, in my own home, I even put it aside at times to give the imposing image a rest.

Still, the cover was quite the triumph as it so vividly expressed the core drive, unflinching self-belief and relentless will that propelled Serena’s startling return to prominence.

One reader—Liza Kramer—observed, “I love this cover. It’s awesome. It shows so much feeling. You don’t see emotion like that expressed very often. People don’t allow themselves to reveal it. Serena just let it all hang out—good for her.”

To contact Bill Simons, email him at editorial@insidetennis.com

© 2007 INSIDE TENNIS All rights reserved.
All photographs, text and graphics, appearing on the Inside Tennis web site are protected by copyright.
Any republication, retransmission or reproduction or other use is prohibited without express written permission of Inside Tennis.