National Post (National Edition)
WILLIAMS STANDS UP TO McENROE
Serena Williams let John McEnroe have it in the best way possible Monday evening. Williams served up two flaming tweets that deftly singed McEnroe for saying “if she played the men’s circuit, she’d be like 700 in the world.” And, in case he missed her point about female empowerment, maybe McEnroe can pick up a copy of Vanity Fair, which features the nude and pregnant Williams on the cover.
“Dear John I adore and respect you but please please keep me out of your statements that are not factually based,” she tweeted. “I’ve never played anyone ranked ‘there’ nor do I have time. Respect me and my privacy as I’m trying to have a baby. Good day sir.”
Never mind that the images, taken by Annie Leibovitz, pretty much strip away the vestiges of privacy; Serena’s on a roll.
McEnroe made his comments Sunday with NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro. The seven-time major singles champion is trying to sell his But Seriously memoir and revived a “Battle of the Sexes” narrative most people would have considered long dead. Garcia-Navarro asked why McEnroe would qualify the statement by calling Williams the best female player in the world. That was chum in the water. “Oh!” McEnroe replied. “Uh, she’s not, you mean, the best player in the world, period?”
“Yeah, the best tennis player in the world,” GarciaNavarro said. “You know, why say female player?”
“Well, because if she was in, if she played the men’s circuit she’d be like 700 in the world,” McEnroe said. “... That doesn’t mean I don’t think Serena is an incredible player. I do, but the reality of what would happen would be I think something that perhaps it’d be a little higher, perhaps it’d be a little lower. And on a given day, Serena could beat some players. I believe because she’s so incredibly strong mentally that she could overcome some situations where players would choke ‘cause she’s been in it so many times, so many situations at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, etc. But if she had to just play the circuit — the men’s circuit — that would be an entirely different story.”
McEnroe is right, of course, it would be different on the men’s circuit, but ... who cares? Think McEnroe could win the Australian Open in the searing heat of Melbourne while pregnant? Both are silly debates, truly deserving of “you cannot be serious.”
Buzz Bissinger, author of the Vanity Fair piece, calls Serena the best tennis player in history, with her aggregate winning percentage of 85.76 per cent and 72 tournament victories. She has, he points out, earned more than US$84 million in prize money and nearly twice that in endorsements and appearance fees. In the early stages of pregnancy, she didn’t drop a set as she won all seven matches at the Australian Open.
How great is she? How does one quantify greatness and how does gender fit in? It’s a subject Williams has considered before. Now 35, she is aware that what remains of an athletic career that began when she was a child is approaching its end. Taking stock of the social and racial landscape, she’s assessing her place in it and she knows just how different the debate about whether she is one of sports’ all-time greats might be if only ...
“I think if I were a man, I would have been in that conversation a long time ago,” Williams said in December on ESPN. “I think being a woman is just a whole new set of problems from society that you have to deal with, as well as being black, so it’s a lot to deal with — and especially lately. I’ve been able to speak up for women’s rights because I think that gets lost in colour, or gets lost in cultures. Women make up so much of this world, and, yeah, if I were a man, I would have 100 per cent been considered the greatest ever a long time ago.”
In 2016, Williams wrote an open letter “to all incredible women who strive for excellence” in which she urged them to “dream big” and concluded:
“As we know, women have to break down many barriers on the road to success. One of those barriers is the way we are constantly reminded we are not men, as if it is a flaw. People call me one of the ‘world’s greatest female athletes.’ Do they say LeBron is one of the world’s best male athletes? Is Tiger? Federer? Why not? They are certainly not female. We should never let this go unchallenged. We should always be judged by our achievements, not by our gender.
Let it be noted McEnroe called Williams “arguably the greatest athlete of the last 100 years” when she won Wimbledon in 2015 and also note he didn’t qualify that based on gender. So whatever his point was, Serena countered it effectively, with the Vanity Fair cover as an exclamation point. Take that.