Bill Simons
Serena Williams is a Jehovah’s Witness. She doesn’t believe in luck. But it’s been said that few in tennis have been more lucky.
She was conceived by her parents with the idea of becoming a tennis superstar. Her father Richard was an unconventional but wise mentor. He had her throwing footballs to teach her how to serve. She’d go on to rule the circuit with the best women’s serve in history. She was gifted with a wonderfully powerful body and superb athleticism. And, yes, she was fortunate that she had an older sister who was so supportive, and who forged a path to stardom.
But Serena has been incredibly unlucky in many ways. She stepped on a glass in a Munich bar and needed 18 stitches. Her career was derailed. She suffered a pulmonary embolism in 2011 that brought her near death. In 2018, right after she’d given birth, she faced another life-threatening pulmonary embolism.
On court, a crowd filled an Indian Wells stadium with booes for over two hours as Serena, just 19, managed to prevail in a rowdy, controversial final. Problematic calls and questionable rulings, or lack of rulings (versus Capriati, Henin, Stosur, Clijsters and Osaka), have been a much debated thread throughout her career.
But the greatest warrior in WTA history always fought on. Goodness, she won the 2017 Australian Open while pregnant. She seemed poised to equal the most treasured record in tennis – Margaret Court’s 24 singles Slams. In recent years, you could argue that Serena had the best overall record in majors. Since the 2018 French Open, no WTA player has had more wins than Serena. But four finals and 12 majors later, Court’s record remained elusive.
Many of her fans saw this year’s Wimbledon as her last great hope. Grass is her favorite surface, she’d worked hard to prepare, key rivals like Simona Halep and Naomi Osaka had withdrawn, and her draw was decent.
It was a nice little plus that yesterday, Americans had done splendidly. The vibe was good, and sister Venus had started Tuesday’s play with a wonderful win – her first since the Australian Open. How inspiring. Certainly today Serena would handle her modest opponent, Aliaksandra Sasnovich, ranked No. 100, with some ease. But drama follows Serena like a shadow, and after just six games in the first set, disaster hit.
This year, Wimbledon falls had already been a major issue. After his first-round match, Novak Djokovic, whose precise footwork is legendary, complained that he’d never fallen so much. And about an hour before Serena took the court, Frenchman Adrian Mannarino slipped, his knee buckled, and his hopes for scoring the win of his life by upsetting Roger Federer were dashed in an instant. Roger soon said, “It’s awful. It shows that one shot can change the outcome of a match, a season, a career…He could have won the match at the end. He was the better player, so I definitely got a bit lucky.”
Soon, like Mannarino, Serena would also be unlucky. She would be tearing up, her face filled with frustration and sorrow, her body in pain, the hopes of millions of her fans shattered. Last year, obviously, she couldn’t play, and now, once again, there would be no Wimbledon glory for the greatest woman player of all time. Gone was the possibility of a third-round rematch with former Wimbledon champ Angie Kerber, and a dream match-up in the quarterfinals against Coco Gauff. Now one word seemed to have descended on the world of tennis: shock.
Federer was stunned when, in the middle of his press conference, he was informed of Serena’s injury. “This obviously is terrible,” he said. “Back-to-back matches, and it hit Serena as well. Oh, I can’t believe it.” Historians were quick to recall Wimbledon’s long history of injuries. In 1985, when young Boris Becker hurt himself on Court Two, his coach, Ion Tiriac, insisted that the 17-year-old not quit. It took the physio forever to get to Becker’s court. The German played through his pain, and soon after prevailed in the Wimbledon final to score one of the great a-star-is-born moments in tennis history.
Chris Evert, who candidly admitted she was in shock, said, “There have been a lot of surgeries after playing on these courts.” Commentators sounding like they had their PhDs in horticulture noted that the grass had probably gathered moisture under Centre Court’s closed roof, that Britain had had its wettest spring in years, and that Wimbledon’s “virgin courts” often are treacherous early in the tourney. Critics wondered what could be done.
For now it hardly mattered. Serena’s tears said it all. In a flash a great champion had been brought to her knees, figuratively and literally. James Blake noted, “For someone who is such a great champion, you want to see them end their careers on their own terms.” Today the fallen Serena limped off the game’s greatest stage. All of tennis hopes that she will soon return strong.
