But I got off on a bit of a tangent there. When I started this project, the ideas evolved, reformed, reshaped themselves oh so many times, but there was no doubt in my mind about two things: how I wanted to start it - Arthur Ashe - and how I wanted to end it. How could I possibly end it with anyone else, really? The greatest black tennis player of them all - hell, one of the greatest black athletes to ever walk the face of the earth, period - one who simply towers above the rest, to the point that people who don't know the first thing about tennis know how great this woman is.
Serena Motherfucking Williams.
Honestly, I could just end the post right there. And yes, that is almost invariably my choice for an epithet regarding Serena these days, expletive included. Oh, she has a middle name - Jameka - but as far as I'm concerned, this woman's full legal name should be Serena Motherfucking Williams.
The prospect of writing about Serena struck me as equal parts exciting and daunting, of which the latter emotion is honestly another reason why I had to save Serena til the end of this project. There is absolutely NO WAY I could have come out cold and be able to accurately summarize how I feel about this woman if I'd done it at the very beginning. And hell, after writing blogs for twenty-seven straight days, I still feel like I'm only halfway prepared. I've sat here for days racking my brain on what I could possibly come up with that would do her justice, both for neophytes and the experienced fan alike. I don't know if I can truly summarize everything that is Serena (Jameka) Motherfucking Williams, but soldier on I must, for she deserves every superlative that I'm about to place upon her, and then some.
As I've gradually begun to coalesce my feelings and figure out what it is I want to say about Serena, I keep drifting back to one primary thought, which may be one that you've never heard before, aside from Serena herself, since she said it in December:
Serena Williams, 23-time Grand Slam champion in singles, 14-time Grand Slam doubles winner with her sister, and four-time Olympic gold medalist, is underrated.
Yeah, I said it. Seriously. Look at the list of accomplishments I just listed off. 23 majors. 14 in doubles. Four golds. Yet the amount of people who still criticize her, still find something to nitpick about - her race and her appearance (I watched an old highlights video a few days ago and saw her being referred to as a "ghetto chimp." But racism died in 1965, homie), her physique, her photos in Sports Illustrated, her off-court business ventures - is staggering. Particularly when it comes to some of her on-court outbursts - yes, she's had a handful of dumbass incidents. Shit happens. But in Serena's case, they're magnified beyond belief; I will never forget the day after one of her most famous incidents, the 2009 U.S. Open, when Roger Federer, most observers' pick for the best male player ever, was picked up on camera angrily swearing at the chair umpire. (This is, incidentally enough, *easily* my favorite Roger Federer moment of all time.) But beyond a fine, that incident received nary a peep of attention in comparison to what Serena got, of course. Hell, speaking of Federer, he was very recently quoted (I think not even two days ago, in fact) as saying that Serena was "on the way to becoming the greatest of all time." Da fuck you mean, "on the way"? READ THOSE NUMBERS AGAIN. WHAT MORE DOES SHE HAVE TO DO? She has five more majors than you do, Mr. Federer, and a whopping 14 more majors in doubles than you, if we're being catty. (Which we're not. Of course.) But she's "on the way." Pfft.
If you've noticed the way I've phrased things throughout this blog so far, I've tried to parse my phrasing very carefully. I don't say that a player is "one of the greatest women's tennis players ever"; I say that they are "one of the greatest tennis players ever." Why? Because I don't view men's tennis and women's tennis as separate entities, aside from the mere formality that they don't compete against one another; in fact, that is one of the single most beautiful things about the sport to me, the fact that the women are given equal shine on the biggest stages of the the game. Seriously, imagine the WNBA holding their finals while interspersed with the NBA finals - it would never happen, right? A women's softball league playing games and intermingling with the World Series? No chance. But tennis? When you watch Wimbledon and the other major events, yes, you get Roger, you get Rafa, you get Novak, Andy, Stan, etc. But you also get Serena and Venus. You get Angelique Kerber. You get Azarenka and
I mean, seriously. I just feel like shaking people when they don't give Serena her due, don't mention her in the same breath and with the same zeal that's reserved for the stars of the other sports. We should be celebrating this woman the exact same way Tom Brady is celebrated, or LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kris Bryant, Lionel Messi - whoever you want to name. Serena is easily right up there among all of them, perhaps even greater when you look at what she's accomplished.
Have you any idea what makes her so great? Do you realize?? I wish I could embed that Flaming Lips song to play on cue right now, so just imagine that you can hear that big "doooooo youuuuu reeeeaaaaliiiize?!" part right now at the beginning of each of these bullet points.
DO YOU REALIZE:
- ...that Serena won her first major in 1999? When she was a few weeks shy of 18 years old? And that she just won #23 last month, in 2017, at age 35? How many athletes from 1999 do you know that are still at the top of their profession? Here's a list of the ten highest-paid athletes in the world in 1999 from Forbes Magazine, in descending order: Michael Schumacher, Tiger Woods, Oscar De La Hoya, Michael Jordan, Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson, Shaquille O'Neal, Lennox Lewis, Dale Earnhardt, and Grant Hill. Barring death in the case of Dale Earnhardt, do you know how many of these athletes are still active? One - Tiger Woods, who plays a much less physically demanding sport, and whose career honestly seems like it's on life support these days. Serena has not only outlasted her peers (and note that there are no women among that list), she's still the number one ranked player. At age 35. Yes, there have been bumps along the road, injuries both life-threatening and weird (the broken glass thing at the restaurant was an odd one), but at the end of the day and when the chips are down, no one has been better than winning than Serena Williams when it counts the most. And she's still doing it.
- ...that her record-tying streak of 186 consecutive weeks at #1 (recently snapped by Angelique Kerber before Serena regained the top spot after this year's Australian Open) was set while she became the oldest #1 player in history, at age 31 in 2013, and lasted all the way up to a few weeks before she turned 35? That's right, she not only set a record for age, but managed to tie the record in longevity, too.
- ...that she has won more Grand Slams in singles than every other player I've profiled combined? Althea Gibson, Arthur Ashe, Yannick Noah, and Venus are the other major winners of black descent; their combined total is 16, of which the women account for 12 of them. 16 ain't 23, though. You put four high-quality players together and you still can't touch what Serena has accomplished.
- ...that she has won three majors while saving a match point along the way (the 2003 and 2005 Australian Opens, 2009 Wimbledon) - the most of any player, regardless of gender, in tennis history?
- ...that she has won six Grand Slams without dropping a set along the way, the most in the Open Era, gender be damned once again?
- ...that she has won 10 majors since her 30th birthday, easily the most that anyone - yup, you guessed it, on either professional tour - has won after hitting that milestone birthday?
- ...that she has recovered from a set down to win on 37 occasions in Grand Slams?
- ...that she has her own personal version of Michael Jordan's celebrated "flu game," stretched out over the course of an entire tournament? During the 2015 Roland Garros tournament, Serena battled a severe case of the flu and struggled physically, having to come back from a set down on four separate occasions during the tournament. She even threw up into a towel during a changeover in the middle of her semifinal match against Timea Bacsinszky. She was down a set and a break at that point; after being physically ill, she came back to sweep the next 10 games of the match and won 4-6, 6-3, 6-0. In the final, still struggling physically, she couldn't hold onto a two-break lead in the second set against Lucie Safarova, nor serving for the title at 6-5, and lost a tough tiebreaker to lose the set. Eventually, she found herself down a break, 2-0 in the third and final set; she recovered to sweep the next six games and take the title, 6-2.
I mean, what more do you want? And I haven't even mentioned the "Serena Slam," winning four majors in a row, which she's done not once but twice, in 2002-03 and 2014-15. Never mind the fact that she failed to complete the calendar-year Grand Slam in 2015 (which is Drake's fault), she still won four in a row. Record-setting achievements, incredible comebacks, both on and off the court (she had a pulmonary embolism in 2011, don't forget that), dramatics, theatrics, controversies...every single hallmark of what we associate with great athletes and then some can be found within Serena Williams' oeuvre. And yet, as I alluded to earlier, people still give this woman shit. Seriously. They drudge up her outbursts, call her racist names on internet forums and comment boxes, insist that she's dominating an era of weak competition...the latter really grinds my gears. Especially after she tied and eventually broke Steffi Graf's Open Era record of majors, which was 22, people go back and drag up noted homophobe Margaret Court (that's not libelous at all, either - she's on the record, go look it up) and her 24 majors that are spread out over both the pre-Open Era and afterward, inflated as they are by 11 Australian Opens that she dominated in an era where no one bothered to play the damn tournament. Well, let me tell you something, which I'll state for the record once more: Serena's span of winning major titles has lasted from 1999 to 2017 - almost two decades. Chris Evert? 1974-86. Martina Navratilova? 1978-90. Steffi Graf? 1987-99. Even Court, who was undeniably talented despite all criticisms I might levy against her world views, has a span that only lasts from 1960 to 1973. In terms of longevity and continued excellence, there is no tennis player, living or dead, regardless of gender, that has done the damn thing as long as Serena Williams has, and stayed at the top of the sport the way she has. Not a single one. Even Federer's run of 18 majors on the men's side would have been stalled at 2003-12 had he not pulled this recent Australian Open victory out of his ass. (Somewhere, Rafael Nadal weeps.) And the "her competition is weak" argument fails because she's outlasted them all. Justine Henin? Kim Clijsters? Lindsay Davenport? Jennifer Capriati? They're all long gone now. In fact, the only one of her biggest rivals still around IS her sister, a credit to how underrated Venus' continued longevity has been, as well. It's not Serena's fault that she's still going and the others couldn't keep up.
(Yes, Serena...yes you are.)
But she's a black woman, of course. So as she rightfully noted a few short months ago, she's underrated because she's not a man. We don't want to put her on the same pedestal as Brady or Montana or Jordan or whoever you want to name. Well, enough of that bullshit. If you take one thing away from this post, I want it to be this: Serena Motherfucking Williams is easily one of the greatest athletes - REGARDLESS OF GENDER - that has ever lived. And the scary part is, she's not done, from the looks and sounds of it. We can only imagine how many more records she will set before she finally calls it quits. There could hardly be a more appropriate way to end this project - two women, but ESPECIALLY this one, who more than anything have taught and continue to teach me that anything is possible, regardless of what you look like or where you come from.
Thus concludes Black Tennis Month. I would like to convey my sincerest gratitude to everyone who read these posts, shared them on Facebook or Twitter, kept up with it all month, and got something, anything from it, whether it was a reiteration of facts you already knew, or a chance to learn about a subject you never knew about before. If you enjoyed it, please Stay tuned to the blog - I will begin posting non-Black Tennis Month topics here shortly. But for now, I think I'm going to take, in what I hope is not too arrogant in saying, a well-deserved break for at least a few days. This was a lot of work. But I got it done, and as I've stated numerous times on numerous platforms, I can only hope that it was as enjoyable to read as it was to create. Thank you. :)
P.S. Do me a solid and go follow @malwashington on Twitter. ;p
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