How you lose matters as much as how you win, and Serena Williams dignified tennis and her career this Friday, one of the most important in the history of the sport, with an epic and exciting defeat. The tennis player hung up her racket in the third round of the US Open, against the Australian Ajla Tomljanovic (7-5, 6-7, 6-1).
The rival —Tomljanovic has never passed the quarterfinals in the ‘Grand Slam’— and the round —Williams always reached the second week— did not seem at first sight the stage for a historic farewell.
But it was. New York experienced an exciting duel, to the open grave, between two tennis players who emptied themselves. Serena, who turns 41 at the end of the month, gave every ounce of his tennis in a final game that will always be remembered.
The match had reached the third set, with everything that can be asked of the occasion: a disputed first set, which the Australian won for details, and a second with the raw emotionresolved in the ‘tie break’ in favor of Williams.
It is possible that in the final set Serena had a somewhat empty tank. She had a hard time closing the stitches, she lost some mobility. Tomljanovic took advantage of it and escaped on the scoreboard until 5-1, with a serve to win the game. FIt was a game that the more than 23,000 people who filled Arthurs Ashe will not forgetthe center court of New York.
The Australian soon had match point. Serena lifted him with two massive volleys at the net. She got back on the precipice, saving it with an impossible right claw to Tomljanovic. A third match point came, which she repelled with a violent, unattainable return.
Tennis, his glorious career, was slipping away from his fingertips. And Serenaba clung to the racket, in an effort that seemed as empty as it was overwhelming. Fourth match point: Serena dominates it with her right hand, like thousands of times, at the bottom, powerful, that breaks the rival. In the stands, jubilation, hands on the head, jumps, stunned faces. For the fifth time, Tomljanovic came out to serve to win the match, and Williams returned it with another forehand return that was a flash. There were people crying. Serena hit the ball with a scream of fury, which was the last exhalation of her tennis.
On the sixth match point, he slammed a midcourt forehand into the net. Central New York, the biggest and loudest stadium on the circuit, fell silent for a second. And she began to applaud in tribute to the best tennis player of the last quarter century.
The loss implies something that was taken for granted before Williams arrived in New York: her career would end without becoming the tennis player with the most ‘Grand Slam’ titles in history. She will stay 23 to one behind Margaret Court, the Australian who dominated the circuit in the 1970s.
Nor does she leave as the player with the most WTA titles – she focused a lot on the big ones – nor as the one who has spent the most weeks at number one in the ranking.
But it has been the dominating tennis player of her generationand a figure who has helped to popularize tennis among the black racial minority and whose shadow reaches far beyond sports, with forays into fashion and business.
Having barely competed since last year’s Australian Open, he had only played four matches so far in 2022. A couple of weeks before the start of the US Open, he announced in a lengthy article in ‘Vogue’ magazine that he would quit tennis after the New York tournament.
He did not count for anyone and many believed that, as in his last two ‘greats’ – Wimbledon this year and last year – he would fall in the first round. But Williams did not come to crawl in a tribute game. He foiled the pomp of firing him in his debut and, in the second round, dispatched world number two Annett Kontaveit. Some began to dream of the impossible, a triumphant return. Before Tomljanovic her tennis said enough, but he left a farewell at the height of the splendor of her career.
