She is a symbol. a person An athlete who has gone far beyond the footsteps of her trailblazing sister and come to rule a cloistered, mostly white sport. She refuses to stop there.
Announcing her plans to retire from tennis, Serena Williams said Tuesday that she will focus her life far beyond sports, prioritizing instead being a mother, a fashion designer, a venture capitalist and much more. She will design her future as she sees fit.
That’s oh-so-Serena.
She has always done it her way, she has always operated on her own terms. She has made her special, exceptionally skilled and well-liked, and has drawn criticism at times. She has helped her become one of the greatest athletes to ever grace us: a black woman who grew from the humblest of American beginnings to a star whose magnetic pull reaches far beyond the boundaries of sport.
His announcement, in a Vogue magazine cover story published on Tuesday, that he would quit tennis after playing the US Open later this month fit the transcendent figure he has become.
It’s easy to forget that her championship journey, which went on to include 23 Grand Slam singles titles, just shy of the record of 24 set by Margaret Court, began with a win at the US Open in 1999. At 17, Serena she became the first black player since Arthur Ashe in 1975 to win a Grand Slam singles title and the first black woman to win a slam since Althea Gibson in 1958.
Williams became the personification of athletic greatness and, for at least two decades, carried the aspirations of racial and gender equity.
Along the way, he showed the world the incredible power of breaking boundaries and erasing norms. The Vogue article, a first-person account, feels tellingly symbolic, even if it was long overdue, given Williams’ struggles competing in recent years. She did not break the news on her Instagram account, on ESPN or at a postgame news conference. No, Williams does what he wants, when he wants, how he wants.
Of course, he has Anna Wintour, the tennis-loving editor of Vogue, on speed dial. Of course, she would advertise that she is taking a break from tennis through one of the world’s leading fashion magazines.
Serena Williams has never let tennis define her.
With the news of retirement, our memories of her come in waves. Oh how she loved to entertain and put on a show. Isn’t that what attracted us? She had an ability, a hunger, a desire that demanded to be seen. Watching her stride onto a Grand Slam center court for a first-round match or final under pressure was the best entertainment. She drew crowds at once, bringing with her those who would otherwise never see a tennis match.
Serena Williams’ tennis farewell
The tennis star is retiring after a long career of breaking boundaries and erasing expectations.
Those new fans, and many tried-and-true tennis lovers who had watched the game for years, stood behind her when she ran into trouble or became embroiled in disputes over the ferocious way she sometimes broke the rules of decorum on the court.
Who can forget the 2018 US Open, when she clashed heatedly with the chair umpire who deducted a point and then a full game towards the end of a loss to Naomi Osaka? The full spectrum of her tennis career, the dozens of heart-pounding wins and the occasionally devious surprises, are woven into the tapestry that is Serena Williams.
You can never rule out race when it comes to Serena or Venus Williams, the older sister who started it all. His blackness and her physical stature, in contrast to a tennis world where only a few shared a similar appearance, felt impressive.
Ashe and Gibson were good players who were occasionally great. Yannick Noah, the mixed-race son of a black Cameroonian father and a white mother, won the French Open in 1983. A handful of other black players, men and women, left brief but important marks on tennis.
No one took the lead in the game or dominated it with the forceful consistency of the Williams sisters.
Serena added a bold challenge to the venture, as predicted with certainty by her father, Richard Williams, who, even when Venus was first bursting onto the tennis scene, said that it would be Serena who would become the greatest in tennis history. .
Can you imagine Jimmy Evert, Chris Evert’s father, coach and tennis establishment member, saying the same thing about his daughter when she burst onto the scene in the early 1970s?
Nothing Serena Williams did was limited to tradition. She defied the status quo and played with a mix of power and consistent net touch, energized by a serve for her age and a boxer’s steely will.
Only the elite of the elite can change the way their sport is played. Think of Stephen Curry’s influence on modern basketball and his fixation on outside shots. Or the revolutionary impact of Tiger Woods on golf. Add Williams to the mix.
Others played a power game before her, Jennifer Capriati, for example, just as there were other 3-point shooters before Curry. Williams took the game to new heights. She entered the 1999 US Open final against Martina Hingis, who had catapulted herself to the top of the rankings by playing delicately and exploiting all angles as prescribed by the old guard. After Williams’ power, speed and grit beat Hingis, 6-3, 7-6, tennis would never be the same.
Think not only of Williams’ game, but also of her style: how she went beyond the old fashion and appearance norms codified in tennis since the Victorian era.
Williams appeared as herself, with her hair braided or beaded or sometimes dyed blonde. On the court, she wore outfits of all colors: blue, red, pink, black, tan, you name it. She donned studs, sequins, and boots disguised as tennis shoes, or was she the other way around?
He wore clothes that flowed and swayed, or that proudly showed off his strong stomach and shoulders. She made the full-body catsuit a thing at the 2002 US Open and the talk of Paris at the 2018 French Open.
“I feel like a warrior, a warrior princess,” Williams told reporters at the French Open, referring to the movie “Black Panther.”
“It’s my way of being a superhero.”
Sure, noticing your fashion may seem superficial and superfluous. But not in this context. Black women’s bodies and fashion are often heavily criticized in a way that white women don’t often experience. Furthermore, tennis is one of those games bound by a tradition of exclusion and uniformity. Williams blew all that up.
Here’s another way he jumped past the old limits. Recall that Williams won the 2017 Australian Open when she was two months pregnant. She then remembers that she nearly died in childbirth. She later recalls her return after giving birth to Alexis Olympia. She would go on to four more major championship finals.
She lost them all, true, and none of them were close partners. But Williams was past her best years, with a child by her side and the business world calling. And her return from her pregnancy helped spark a major rule change in women’s professional tennis, allowing players to enter tournaments based on their pre-pregnancy rankings up to three years after giving birth.
Now, Williams plans to end this stage of her life after her last match at the US Open, be it a first-round loss or another outcome against all odds: winning it all, at age 40, after barely stepping on the tour. During the past year.
She will not go easily. She made that clear when she announced what she termed her “evolution of her” which will include trying to have another child. Her attempts, she said, were at odds with continuing her tennis career, a fact she pointed out that professional male athletes don’t have to deal with.
This looks like the final stage of his career, but Williams should never surprise us. I wouldn’t be surprised if perhaps with a second child or more in tow, he shows up on the pro tour again, if only for one more bite of the esports spotlight.
If Serena Williams wants to, she will. This is what we know.
Source: www.nytimes.com