Williams faces ultimate test
SERENA Williams has spent her career defying the odds, winning 23 grand slam singles titles and becoming the oldest world No 1 at age 35. But now, she will face perhaps the ultimate challenge — making a comeback after motherhood.
Williams, who announced her engagement to Reddit social media site co-founder Alexis Ohanian last December, revealed this week that she is having a baby, in a Snapchat photo with the caption “20 weeks”.
If her timing was precise, it would mean Williams won the Australian Open, her 23rd grand slam crown to set an Open-era record, without dropping a set in January — while eight weeks pregnant.
Kelly Bush Novak, Williams’ publicist, told AFP only that Serena “is expecting a baby this fall” and “looks forward to returning in 2018”.
Can Williams, who turns 36 in September, return from having her first child and overtake Australia’s Margaret Court for the all-time record of 24 grand slam singles crowns? Moreover — would she even want to? “This is another one of those ultimate challenges for Serena, say around the age of 37, to try and tie Margaret Court,” said Pam Shriver, a 1980s US tennis star-turned-commentator for ESPN. “There’s no reason she can’t do it.”
Court was 29 when she gave birth to son Daniel in 1972 and the next year captured her final three grand slam titles, sweeping the Australian, French and US Open crowns.
Williams has not backed down from challenges, injuries, age, controversy and tragedy in becoming the face of women’s tennis for most of the past two decades.
She learnt the game she would come to dominate from her father Richard and practising mainly against her older sister Venus. They shunned the typical junior development circuit for working on their own, Venus drawing laughs when she said she expected to battle her sister for world No 1 — only to be proven correct in epic fashion.
Serena’s storied WTA Tour career began at age 14 in 1995 in Quebec City. She then stunned top-ranked Martina Hingis to capture the 1999 US Open at age 17 for her first grand slam title, becoming only the second African-American woman to win a major after Althea Gibson. With success, though, came controversy. In 2001 at Indian Wells, fans jeered Venus defaulting a semifinal to her younger sister and booed Serena in the subsequent final, which she won. Serena boycotted the event until 2015 as a result of the treatment, her father insisting racist remarks were made to him on that day.
Williams began the first “Serena Slam” in 2002 with wins at the French Open, Wimbledon and US Open and finished the feat at the 2003 Australian Open, defeating Venus in all four finals to join Court, Steffi Graf, Martina Navratilova and Maureen Connolly as the only women to hold four slam titles simultaneously.
Her run ended with a loss to Justine Henin in the French Open semifinals, but she rebounded to win Wimbledon before undergoing quadriceps surgery to miss the US Open.
Williams overcame a left knee injury to win the 2008 US Open, and won the 2009 and 2010 Australian and Wimbledon crowns.
She won her next major at Wimbledon in 2012, launching a run of four slam victories in six tries that set up “Serena Slam II” from the 2013 US Open through 2015 Wimbledon.