Serena Williams’s Black Excellence comes at a vital time for America

At a time when race relations in America are approaching breaking point, Serena’s record-equalling Wimbledon win means her achievements take on greater significance than ever

 

The simple forehand volley caromed into the open court and the champion tumbled gently backward into the grass; the coup de grâce as elementary as the three service winners that preceded it. Serena Williams was the Wimbledon champion for a seventh time with a straight-sets win over Angelique Kerber – a record-tying 22nd major championship all but ending the argument over whether she is best there has ever been.

The greatest American sports tale of our time remains a work in progress: a black female Jehovah’s Witness from Compton who entered an arena populated almost exclusively by white women from more advantaged backgrounds and persevered in the face of racism, family tragedy, injuries and illness to dominate three separate eras of challengers and rewrite the history books of a sport not desperately keen to be revised. And at a moment in America where the basic value of black lives has been violently called into question, Serena’s latest showcase of unapologetic Black Excellence could not have come at a more vital time.

Winter is the most compelling season of a top athlete’s journey, when the hero must compensate with wits and dogged determination where physical gifts were once enough. Ali suspended on the ropes in Zaire when he could no longer depend on his legs to pirouette from harm’s way. Michael Jordan becoming one of the NBA’s finest post players in this thirties, when the explosive vertical game of his twenties was no longer at his command. The greatest champions win titles when they’re young and find a way to keep them until they’re old, even and especially when their bodies don’t comply.

For Serena, the third act started four years ago when she suffered a shock first-round defeat at Roland Garros to a French wild card ranked 111th named Virginie Razzano. Having only just recovered from a pair of health crises – a hematoma and pulmonary embolism that required emergency treatment and surgery for a foot injury that sidelined her for half a season – the American’s only first-round defeat in 64 majors was the nadir of a career with no shortage of peaks and troughs; one that shook her self-belief its very foundation.

That setback prompted Serena to look outside her family circle and form a partnership with the French coach Patrick Mouratoglou, under whose counsel her career has enjoyed a resurgence that defies a credulity encoded by our understanding of time. Her ledger before Mouratoglou already rated among the finest ever: a singles mark of 523 wins and 107 losses (.830), 41 titles including 13 grand slams in 47 entered (.277). But the results over their four years together are a different class altogether: a singles record of 245-20 (.925), 30 titles including nine majors in 17 played (.529). Even more stark is her improvement against opponents in the top 10 from before (111-59, .653) to after (57-7, .891).

But since winning Wimbledon last year to hold all four grand slam titles simultaneously for the second time in her career, Serena suffered a shock loss to Roberta Vinci in the US Open semi-finals and rare grand slam final losses to Kerber in Melbourne and Garbiñe Muguruza at Roland Garros. Suddenly questions over her physical decline were compounded with doubts over her nerve.

“There was something missing for a few months and the thing that was missing was just Serena. The tennis player was there but Serena as a person wasn’t really herself, so she was much more beatable,” Mouratoglou said. “She got that back over time. I think we didn’t realize how much time she needed to recover from the loss at the US Open.”

While Serena’s quickness on the court is not what it was, the world No1 is still stronger and smarter than anyone on the circuit. Her devastating serve – a harmonic blend of mechanics, leg strength, accuracy and confidence famously modeled after Pete Sampras’s – remains the greatest single stroke in the history of the sport. Her 74 aces at this year’s Championships accounted for more than 10% of the 738 struck overall in the women’s singles. Time and again it has bailed her out, never more than during the only break point she faced in Saturday’s final. Her response? A 117mph ace out wide followed by a 124mph thunderbolt down the middle. When she capped a lengthy rally on the next point by forcing an error with a backhand down the line to earn the hold, the result seemed all but a handshake away.

Afterward Serena remembered a phone call with Mouratoglou shortly after her French Open loss, when the worried coach finally sensed an upturn in his player’s demeanor.

“He just said, ‘You’re back’,” recalled Williams, who earned a $2.59m payout with Saturday’s win to become to first woman to surpass $80m in career earnings – more than twice the next highest earner. “I guess he was right.”

Williams (34 years, 287 days) becomes the oldest player to win a grand slam singles title in the Open era, breaking a record she herself set last year. She’s now won grand slam titles in her teens (one), twenties (12) and thirties (nine, a record).

And she will return to a homeland where the burden of race that she’s carried with grace through a 21-year professional career has reached a boiling point. She admitted on Saturday to closely following the events in Dallas, where on Thursday five police officers were killed and seven others wounded at the end of a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest over the recent police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.

“I feel anyone in my colour in particular is of concern. I do have nephews that I’m thinking, ‘Do I have to call them and tell them, Don’t go outside. If you get in your car, it might be the last time I see you.’

“That is something that I think is of great concern because it will be devastating. They’re very good kids. I don’t think that the answer is to continue to shoot our young black men in the United States.

“Also obviously violence is not the answer of solving it. The shooting in Dallas was very sad. No one deserves to lose their life, doesn’t matter what color they are, where they’re from. We’re all human. We have to learn that we have to love one another. It’s going to take a lot of education and a lot of work to get to that point.”

The fact Serena has been forced to consider her race throughout her professional life – and never more than on home soil (see: Indian Wells) – is a hardship most of her competitors have never had to bother with and makes what she has accomplished all the more impressive. Seven titles at Wimbledon – six more at the Australian Open, three at Roland Garros and six at the US Open – will do nothing to assuage the horror and anguish of the past few days. But as a nation continues to confront a spectre long denied by broad segments of its people, the towering achievements of this very American woman – our Serena – will surely only grow in stature.