Earlier this summer, I attended the French Open with a group of university students who wanted to work in sports media. It was a Friday, and the men’s semi-final was a big deal, but we got there early and got to Court Suzanne Lenglen, where a women’s doubles match was taking place.
It was two American teams: Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula against Madison Keys and Taylor Townsend.
The Red Clay Students Didn’t Know It At First, But They’re Looking At Serena Williams’ Legacy In Real Time. Three of those doubles have black parents, and if you ask Gauff, Townsend or Keys how they got into tennis, the story starts with a Williams sister. When Venus and Serena Williams started playing tennis, the sport was completely white – and still is.
Except in American women’s tennis. That is heritage.
Serena Williams has announced that she is growing outside of tennis, and I will agree with her that a lot of the words that can be traditionally used to tell the retirement story have no place for her. How do you retire from a career that made thousands of black girls pick up tennis rackets and start playing, that redefined the term GOAT with 23 singles Grand Slam titles, opened up the world of white shoes and set exclamation point on sentences that begin with the words Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson?
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That’s not a question, because you can’t. Just who she is. There will be one more repetition, but this goes beyond picking up the racket and then putting it down again.
What you can say about Serena Williams is that she defied all the labels and expectations that came her way. It started in her own family, where she was a better sister than her older sister. From not playing “enough” enough junior USTA tournaments but playing better than players have ever done. It continues to come with her style, from the beads she wears that have scandalized some segments of the shabby tennis establishment.
She and Venus were booed by an American crowd at Indian Wells in 2001. It was rumored that her father decided which sister would win when they faced each other, a rumor claiming that the two were segregated. race and sex discrimination. Her family was not always welcoming, and the first years were isolated. However, Serena was too good, too competitive to be stopped.
Serena Williams has aroused a generation of young women who grew up to take on her on the WTA Tour. It’s an extra layer of overgrown psychology for many young women to get through before a game. Can I beat my childhood idol? Should I?
SEnana is real. She’s had moments that are hard to follow, like yelling at a line umpire or losing a game and her composure against Naomi Osaka at the 2018 US Open. In more than two decades of playing, those moments still remain. original and very rare.
She left the main draw at the age of 40 and with a daughter. She won the Australian Open in 2017 while pregnant. She developed a life-threatening blood clot after delivering Olympia and then went on to reach three more Grand Slam finals. For younger fans, this cannot be overstated.
The women on the tour were geriatric players aged 27 in the late ’90s. Serena, Venus and their generation blew those expectations away. Give birth and keep playing – very few players can do that. Giving birth and still a favorite in the draw? Even less.
You can also predict that Serena will play tennis on the moon in 2022.
Serena Williams played, lived and will be out on her own terms. Terms were even unimaginable when she won her first US Open title in 1999.
She might not want to splurge, but the rest of us do, and she graced us with enough time to prepare flashbacks for her US Open final.
But before we get too choked up over the video of a smiling Serena with braces, or the iconic catsuit at the baseline, remember we haven’t seen her final act yet. Serena has always been groundbreaking when it comes to the women’s sports business and supports minority-owned businesses. She has stakes in the NWSL’s City of Angels and the NFL’s Dolphins. She has a venture capital fund that focuses on black and women-owned businesses.
Heritage.
She is the best woman in tennis history, and in the conversation for the best tennis player ever. But she was never only interested in tennis. For Serena Williams, the world is bigger than a tennis court. She changed the game with her strength and with her competitiveness.
There are more games to change up, conventions to challenge, and kids’ birthday parties to plan.
As she says, time to grow.
