STRING OF SURPRISING EVENTS
Canadian Aleksandra Wozniak, once ranked 21st in the world with $2 million in prize money, now plays for peanuts in near-empty stadiums.
Serena Williams let John McEnroe have it in the best way possible.
Williams served up two flaming tweets that deftly singed McEnroe for saying recently that “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 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 in an interview 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 that 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.
“Oh!” McEnroe replied. “Uh, she’s not, you mean, the best player in the world, period?”
“Yeah, the best tennis player in the world,” Garcia-Navarro 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 . . . 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, 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.”
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 increasingly 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 as part of that, 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 last December in an interview with rapper Common for ESPN’s The Undefeated.
Let it be noted that McEnroe called Williams “arguably the greatest athlete of the last 100 years” when she won Wimbledon in 2015 and also note that 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.