When Serena Williams is on the court, time stops. You feel the power of her serve, every shot inches you closer to the TV and you celebrate each won point with a little more gusto than the last.
When she’s serving her opponent off the court, you feel like you could run through a wall after each ace. Watching her play is magical, electric. She’s the type of athlete who can (and rightfully so) command the attention of sports fans everywhere and get them to drop everything else to tune in. I’ll wake up at any hour to watch her play.
To the heartbreak of countless fans, 40-year-old Serena, the greatest to ever play the game, is expected to close her tennis career with the 2022 U.S. Open, after more than 1,000 career singles matches, 73 singles titles, 23 Grand Slam trophies and more than a quarter century as a pro.
“There’s still a little left in me,” she cheekily said Wednesday after beating the No. 2 player in the world, Anett Kontaveit, to advance to the third round Friday against Ajla Tomljanovic.
But there’s one spectacular Serena victory that floods my mind anytime her dominance is mentioned. Sure, there is an abundance of her matches that exemplify the unparalleled player she is, tremendous longevity included. Maybe you’re thinking of her first U.S. Open (and Grand Slam) win at 17 in 1999, or her 2013 French Open win after an 11-year drought, or when she won the 2017 Australian Open while pregnant against older sister Venus — a legend in her own right who jokingly said it was unfairly two against one.
There’s an argument to be made for many of them. That’s what happens when you’re the greatest tennis player of all time and one of the best athletes in history. But the Serena match regularly conjured in my memory when I think of her strength on the court — and one that is undeniably one of her best career performances — wasn’t actually a Grand Slam or in a tournament perennially on the calendar.
It was the unforgettable 2012 London Olympics final. Tennis at the Olympics doesn’t quite carry the same umph as other sports when you have four Grand Slams on the calendar each year. But that final, that victory, was special to Serena and perfectly epitomized her strength and power, the kind of champion she is and how her adoring fans will remember her.
Lopsided, jaw-dropping, truly unbelievable, it was a quintessential Serena match amid one of several peaks in her career — and it took her just 62 minutes to take down Maria Sharapova for gold. SIXTY-TWO MINUTES.
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During the London Olympics — sandwiched in August between her fifth Wimbledon and her fourth U.S. Open victories — Serena lost just 17 games in six matches on her way to winning her one and only singles gold medal, completing her career Golden Slam.
Draped in red, white and blue, she was calm, confident, focused and poised, and certainly played like it. You’d never know she was competing for a prize she’d never won, and even if she had 10 gold medals at home, she surely would have played in the same aggressive manner.
Serving first and on the attack, Serena came out firing against Sharapova, and within minutes, it became clear what kind of dominant match fans were in for. With her peak-Serena fiery serve pushing 120 miles per hour, she racked up 10 total aces, three in the first game alone to set the match’s speedy pace. She forced Sharapova running up and down the baseline from the start, ace or not, breaking her opponent nearly every chance she got.
“Her serve is, by far, the most beautiful serve ever in the history of our sport,” Billie Jean King noted Monday in a touching tribute to Serena following her first-round U.S. Open victory. Most beautiful and unquestionably one of the most powerful and difficult to return, then and now.
When she’s on the court, you feel like you’re battling alongside her, as her intensity draws you in and captures your undivided attention. I seldom yell at my TV during sports, but with Serena, every point won or lost feels personal because she pulls you in so deep.
You fist pump with her after every ace, argue close calls with the unknowing chair umpire, hold your breath when she inches toward the net, shout when she wins a break point and pray she wins the first set, knowing she’s 100-3 in majors when she does. When she yells, “Come on!” after a won point, you get goosebumps.
Even rewatching this 10-year-old Olympic final, I was captivated — and frustrated with her unforced errors, knowing 2012 Serena is better than that.
In this decade-old Olympic final, Serena didn’t relinquish a point until the third game, notably exhausting Sharapova regardless of who ended up with the winner. And in the occasional instances when Sharapova sent her into a sprint, her footwork was impeccable. She moved with tremendous speed and elegance, totally commanding the baseline with every forceful return. Mesmerizing. You couldn’t take your eyes off her.
After just 30 minutes and change, in part thanks to a hard-fought fourth game, Serena won the quick opening set, 6-0. Long before she became an Olympic champion, it was obvious this was a remarkable, once-in-a-lifetime kind of match.
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What comes to mind when you think of Serena’s strength beyond the court is even more powerful.
If she wanted to have a successful tennis career, she needed to be strong. Her opponents aside, she’s been a constant target throughout her career with people commenting on and criticizing her. Her personality, her body, her hair, her fashion, her playing style, her attitude, the way she celebrates, the way she loses. The thinly (or sometimes never) veiled racist and sexist criticisms lobbed against her — especially when the same language would seldom be used to describe her white men counterparts — forced her to be strong.
But that’s who she is. Instead of fleeing, she fights back for herself and in defense of others.
When women athletes face tough choices between their careers or growing their families — a contemplation Serena recently noted that men seldom have to consider — it’s often either/or, not both.
And only the incorrect would have blamed her had she not returned to competition after giving birth to daughter Olympia in 2017, especially after what she endured.
Then 35, she had to fight to save her own life as she suffered a pulmonary embolism, where at least one artery in the lungs is blocked by a blood clot, following an emergency C-section. She nearly died but transformed her traumatic experience into advocacy, taking her ongoing fight for equity for women, and particularly women of color, to another level and highlighting the tragically high statistics of Black women dying from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes.
She remained open about her recovery and postpartum challenges, surely a comfort to the many people around the world in comparable situations. Whether it was about her struggles with postpartum depression or getting back in shape or her famous 2018 French Open black catsuit for “all the moms out there that had a tough pregnancy,” Serena was more transparent than any reasonable person would have expected her to be.
Serena Williams, to @jon_wertheim, on the cat suit: "All the moms out there that had a tough pregnancy and have to come back and try to be fierce, in a middle of everything. That's what this represents. You can't beat a cat suit, right?" pic.twitter.com/XycL3WeNbj
— TENNIS (@Tennis) May 29, 2018
An inspiration when she didn’t need to be and an ally of working parents, she’s a hero by so many definitions of the word.
And she did all that while making an improbable comeback to both the Wimbledon final and U.S. Open final within about a year of giving birth. Though she didn’t win either, her journey to those two finals was a victory in itself.
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The second set of the 2012 Olympic final began like the first with a couple powerful aces from Serena to lock up the first game. Even without an ace, there were times when Serena returned it so impossibly hard that Sharapova didn’t even move her feet to attempt to hit it. The ball would whiz by her, as Serena racked up (break) point after (break) point.
“There’s plenty of sympathy around for Sharapova, but from my point of view, this has got to be a total admiration for what Williams is doing here,” the Olympic broadcast noted about the crowd’s roaring between Games 2 and 3 in the second set. “She’s demolishing a young woman, who, up until [July], was the world’s top player. …
“Safe to say we’re seeing something special here from Serena.”
Somehow, “demolishing” was an understatement, and “special” doesn’t come close to doing this match justice. Serena picked Sharapova’s game apart seemingly with ease while performing at a spectacularly elite level with no hope for her opponent to catch up — or catch her breath.
Serena controlled the pace and points in this match so flawlessly that it took Sharapova a full 45 minutes to win her one and only game of the match, cutting the lead to 3-1 in the second set. And you better believe Sharapova fought to earn every single winner, and vice versa, of course.
Even when Sharapova had the opportunity to break Serena in the second set, neither gave in and were stuck at 40-40 for what felt like forever. Serena kept digging, kept pushing to ultimately win with her serve still on fire to go up, 4-1.
This is where her power makes you feel like there’s nothing else in the world going on at that moment except the match, when she’s won the first set and crosses the halfway point in the second one. You can feel the tension leading up to an impending victory. The crowd, which is often in her corner, can feel it too. Her opponents certainly don’t go down without a fight, but peak Serena, this Serena, was unbeatable.
This particular match felt over only a few minutes after it started, and Serena closed her first singles Olympic victory in the same way she began it: with a couple more jaw-dropping aces, match-point included.
Just like that, barely an hour later, Serena Williams was an Olympic gold medalist in women’s singles, and she delightfully jumped for joy before famously doing the crip walk.
Sixty-two minutes and a true rout against someone mistakenly labeled as a rival. No one is comparable to Serena.
Serena is everything — everything we love about sports, everything we hope our favorite athlete can achieve, everything to so many tennis fans with an immeasurably mammoth impact.
Whether she wins Grand Slam No. 24 to tie Margaret Court’s all-time record with a U.S. Open victory or not — her 23 wins are already the record in the Open Era — it doesn’t alter her legendary GOAT status on the court nor will it diminish the groundbreaking leader she is off it. She’s the greatest ever to play the game, and those of us who have been cherishing every match, every serve over the last few years, never knowing if it’d be her last, will do the same as she plays for what’s expected to be one last tournament.
Serena can be down but never counted out, and if she wins No. 24, great. But she has nothing left to prove as an irreplaceable legend on the court, and every match, every win, has been a gift. She’s a hero and an absolute icon who, like Venus, blasted open barriers for women of color in a predominantly white sport and demanded equality.
Her longevity is extraordinary, and her evolution away from tennis — she’s been purposeful in not saying retirement — is surely just as hard on her fans as it is for her. With the U.S. Open expected to be her final tournament, they’ll be there treasuring every serve, every ace, every point and, hopefully, one last twirl.
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