Serena’s legacy lives on at US Open
The institution that is Serena Williams will be absent from the US Open this year, her retirement official and, best we can tell, complete.
Her exit came just a year ago upon her farewell match in Queens, where she won the Open title six out of the 10 times she played for the championship. Williams indeed was serious when she called it quits. Now 41, she just gave birth to her second child (daughter Adira River Ohanian) and has her eye fixed on family and a variety of business endeavors.
With 23 career Grand Slam titles and some $95 million in prize winnings, Williams didn’t just kick down the door. She dominated the women’s game like no one before her, and with her sister, Venus, created a legacy that will be on display these next couple of weeks in the faces of the many US women of color among the sport’s elite.
A sizzling Coco Gauff, 19, just won the Cincinnati Open and is seeded sixth at the Open, three pegs down from Jessica Pegula, the highest seed among American women. Madison Keys, now 28, is seeded 17th.
Some other names in the draw, but not seeded, include Alycia Parks, 22; Sloane Stephens, 30; and Taylor Towsend, 27. All are US women of color. Pegula is the daughter of Buffalo Bills owners Terry and Kim Pegula. Kim, 54, is Asian, originally from Seoul. Venus, now 43 and enjoying life ranked somewhere in the 400-somethings, will be playing, too, invited in as royalty.
“I was so thrilled to see Coco win it last week,” said Toni Wiley, the CEO of Sportsmen’s Tennis & Enrichment Center, which has been teaching the game to inner-city kids for more than a half-century in Dorchester. “And then thrilled to see Taylor Townsend and Alycia
Parks win the women’s doubles.”
Wiley, a woman of color, also noted the increased number of Black US men, such as Frances Tiafoe (seeded No. 10 at the Open), Chris Eubanks (No. 28), and Ben Shelton (not seeded), among the game’s elite and playing in the Open.
“It wasn’t that long ago,” said Wiley, “that we were lamenting the fact that there were no American men anywhere near the Top 50 . . . maybe just a handful in the Top 100.”
Will there ever be another Serena? Not likely. For everyone left swinging a racket now, or the kids at Sportsmen’s or elsewhere dreaming the dream, maybe the goal of one day being No. 1 feels more attainable when the best exits the court. Williams was of another world, out there, unattainable.
“I do know there doesn’t have to be one person who’s carrying the load,” said Wiley. “I think that’s the most important message that today’s [events] deliver. I’ve been fearful that everyone’s going to say, ‘It’s going to be Coco!’, you know, that she’s going to be the next Serena and carry all the pressure on her shoulders. Who knows? Maybe she is, but . . .”
In the post-Serena era, a big difference for the players of color is that they’re not alone. They have community. Eubanks, amid his recent breakout performance at Wimbledon, noted it was Gauff and Japan’s Naomi Osaka who implored him to power through his self-doubt.
“The reality is,” said Wiley, “when you look at the number of women of color, of players of color, that are in the Top 100 on both sides of the draw . . . you’ve got a huge crop of players that are saying, ‘I don’t have to look like how everyone thinks tennis players have to look, I don’t have to play the way people say we’re supposed to play . . . I can be who I am and enjoy myself, express myself and win and accomplish what I want to accomplish.’ ”
Absent Serena, young female players at Sportsmen’s these days, said Wiley, have moved on to Gauff. They want to serve it, return it, bend it like Coco, her career winnings already $8 million.
The constant reminder for all the kids at Sportsmen’s is the time and effort it takes to be among the best. The Williamses kicked down the door, reminded Wiley, but that doesn’t mean just anyone gets a free pass to center court.
It has always been a little more complicated than that.
“There are girls and women, and I hope young boys, out there, saying, ‘Wow, Serena did that . . . she followed her dream, I can do the same thing,’ ” said Wiley. “But I hope they put in the work. Because when you get out there, you can envision her all you want to, and you can pretend that she is sitting on your shoulder telling you what to do, but that’s not going to do the trick.
“The difference is, in bygone days, you could put in the work and still not get there. You could put in the work and people would still find a way to stack the deck against you. The fact that those times are changing, that means a lot.”