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Serena Williams’s exit was just like her career — a fight to the end (1705 hits)

Serena Williams’s exit was just like her career — a fight to the end
By Sally Jenkins -

All of the celebrity tributes and voice-over videos were artificialities, junk, compared to the audience’s acclaim for Serena Williams, the pure roaring waterfalls of applause that thundered down in Arthur Ashe Stadium. It came in full-throated cascades, for the greatest women’s tennis player in history, for the bravura thrust of her game and for the breadth of her dominion now complete. Beneath the shouting and stomping were so many sentiments they could hardly be expressed as the 40-year-old made one last twirl and wave before exiting.

It had been a long, sometimes contentious, multi-hurdled journey from chippy kid to all-time champion who radicalized one of the Whitest and fustiest of sports with her presence. She won her first U.S. Open title at age 17 in 1999, the beginning of a modern record 23 Grand Slam titles. She found the very bottom of her competitive heart and guts Friday night, when just three weeks shy of her 41st birthday she battled with trademark fierceness for three sets and killed five match points with an array of huge if wearying cuts at the tennis ball before losing to Ajla Tomljanovic, 7-5, 6-7 (7-4), 6-1, in what was almost certainly her last major championship match. Just two days earlier, she had upset the No. 2 player in the world, Anett Kontaveit.

As Serena Williams is proving, retiring from tennis can be complicated
“I tried,” she said simply, afterward.

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