Serena Williams: the farewell of a woman more than a tennis legend

Serena Williams with the Wimbledon trophy. LaPresse

The mistake is always the same. Normalize the exceptional, trivialize, get used to, limit oneself to appearance. “With that body and extraordinary strength, no tennis player can compete with Serena Williams“. A result often already written at the start to the point of being almost boring, for those who cannot accept the fact that in sport there are categories and it is up to others to try to bridge the gap. The effect caused by Serena was like that of the big-3s (Federer, Nadal and Djokovic) who share the Grand Slams, of Ronaldo and Messi who collect Golden Balls, of LeBron James who scores in every way, of Mikaela Shiffrin who puts on skis and wins, with rare exceptions. An athlete so superior to the point of creating a before and after, an interpreter of the game who knew how to be something else despite being everything on the pitch, and even something more.

In an interview with Vogue, Serena Williams – via a post on Instagram – announced that she is close to retirement: “The moment comes when we have to decide to move in a different direction. Always a difficult time when you love something so much. My God, I love tennis. But now the countdown has begun. I have to focus on being a mom, on my spiritual goals and finally discovering another, exciting Serena. I will enjoy these next few weeks ”. A few hours later, the American tennis player lost in the second round of the Toronto tournament against Belinda Bencic: organizers and the public paid tribute to her with touching words, flowers and standing ovations. Serena couldn’t hold back her tears.

What was Serena Williams in tennis? A few numbers: 73 WTA titles, 23 Grand Slam tournaments won – absolute record in the Open Era also considering men, second ever winning tennis player ever behind Margaret Smith Court, at 24 -, 319 weeks from number 1. The first Grand Slam victory came in the last millennium, at the US Open ’99; the last in Australia in 2017. Tournament won in the final against her sister Venus and played while waiting for her daughter Olympiawhose birth represented a turning point in Serena’s life – and career -.

Post-partum complications

The birth – with an emergency caesarean section – has in fact brought with it serious problems. “I risked dying”, admits the champion: “I was feeling short of breath and since I wasn’t taking my usual blood thinners, I knew I was going to have a pulmonary embolism. The doctors found a large hematoma in the abdomen, the result of a hemorrhage caused by the blood thinners they had given me to avoid embolism ”. The lioness has been locked up, stayed in bed for six weeks and away from the fields for a year and a half. The heroine who suffers is what everyone suffers, one of the many signs of humanity of a woman – we repeat – whose sporting achievements should not be taken for granted.

Serena Williams with the Catwoman dress at Roland Garros 2018. Lapresse

Serena Williams with the Catwoman dress at Roland Garros 2018. LaPresse

Still, Serena has returned to compete at the highest levels of women’s tennis. All after posing with a baby bump for Vanity Fair first and showing the world the birth scar then, because Williams has been able to be strength for others by showing his frailties and his more human side. In 2018, at Roland Garros, in the first Grand Slam played on his return to the field after the absence of a year and a half for the issues already written about, Serena played in a Catwoman onesie. Provocation? Not at all: “For all mothers who like me have had a hard recovery from pregnancy, here I am. I’m not afraid, I’m not ashamed ”.

Venus and Yetunde Price’s murder

Williams has learned not to be ashamed of an imposing and for many masculine physique, but the path to personal acceptance has been long and complex. As a child, she didn’t like Serena: life alongside Venus – beautiful, slender, perfect physique – wasn’t easy. “I was wondering why I wasn’t like her”. Fundamental, in this sense, was the figure of Yetunde Price, older sister of Serena and Venus killed in 2003 in a clash between armed gangs: “I was going through a difficult time and she managed to calm me down. She made me understand that I would never become the same as Venus, thin and tall like her, but that wasn’t a problem, I was right. Since then I have started to feel more comfortable with myself ”.

Yetunde died in Compton, the ghetto near Los Angeles where Williams grew up. Other than taking it all for granted: Serena started from there, pushed by an ambitious father for her daughters – and played by Will Smith in the film. A winning family – and with little else in hand. So that in 2019 Forbes crowned her among the “World’s Richest Self-Made Women”, the women who made their fortune all by themselves. That physique he never loved became his strength, he made the world jealous because he was unplayable on a tennis court. Strong in sexy is the title of the cover of SELF, in 2016, with the tennis player protagonist.

Failure to record

We said about Venus: for the pride of the father the two faced each other in nine slam finals, with seven wins by Serena and two by her sister. After that match in Melbourne in 2017, Serena played four more finals in a major, reborn after postpartum complications. With a victory she would have reached the 24 Grand Slam titles of Margaret Smith Court, but nothing to do: in 2018 she defeated at Wimbledon against Kerber and in New York against Osaka, in 2019 against Halep and Andreescu in the same tournaments.

Serena and Venus Williams after the 2017 Australian Open final. Lapresse

Serena and Venus Williams after the 2017 Australian Open final. LaPresse

It is a missed goal that gives humanity to a career taken for granted because it was thought of another world than ours, so great it has been. No, Serena was a woman who fought every day, who was reborn several times. That she brought values ​​to the field and did not compromise: for 14 years he did not play one of the most important tournaments in the world – Indian Wells – after receiving racist slurs. Williams was a legendary tennis player, a very strong woman. Now she will be a mother, an entrepreneur – she has a fortune of about 250 million -, she will be the image. Eyes on the US Open, where there will be a farewell to tennis. But Serena has always been more than the racket, even when she dominated around the world.

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Serena Williams: the farewell of a woman more than a tennis legend