ALWAYS & FOREVER SERENA
In being true to herself, she advanced discussion about gender, race in sports
There are any number of ways to measure greatness for an athlete. The titles won, the records broken, the years played.
Even taken together, those would not be enough to do Serena Williams justice.
She will be remembered as one of the greatest athletes of all time for her triumphs on the court, of course. But she will be celebrated (and cherished) long after her career ends for the way she forced society to change how it sees and appreciates women — Black women in particular.
‘‘I don’t particularly like to think about my legacy. I get asked about it a lot, and I never know exactly what to say,’’ Williams said, announcing in a first-person essay for Vogue magazine published Tuesday that the U.S. Open, which starts Aug. 29 in New York, likely will be her last tournament.
‘‘But I’d like to think that thanks to opportunities afforded to me, women athletes feel that they can be themselves on the court. They can play with aggression and pump their fists. They can be strong yet beautiful. They can wear what they want and say what they want and kick butt and be proud of it all.
‘‘Over the years, I hope that people come to think of me as symbolizing something bigger than tennis. I admire Billie Jean [King] because she transcended her sport. I’d like it to be: Serena is this and she’s that and she was a great tennis player and she won those slams.’’
When you think about the athletes who occupy a place in our collective consciousness, the ones we don’t simply respect but revere, you realize it is because they are so much more than their sport: Ali, Russell, Kareem, Billie Jean, LeBron, Serena, Simone.
They were — or are — all the greatest at what they did. Ultimately, however, sports was simply the vehicle through which they changed our world.
And that is why they are so precious to us.
Williams writes in the Vogue essay about her fierce competitiveness and how it served as the fuel for her 23 Grand Slam titles. But it was her belief in herself and refusal to accept anything that didn’t reflect it that has made her an icon.
For too long, the best women athletes were, if not interchangeable, remarkably similar: dainty-seeming white women with lean, compact bodies. Williams is none of those things. She is a strong, curvy Black woman and, rather than trying to downplay her body, wears outfits that accentuate and celebrate it.
She plays with such fierceness and force that her strokes are punctuated by grunts. She is demonstrative, pumping her fists after big points, screaming at herself — including the occasional obscenity — when she needs motivation and, yes, berating referees she thinks are wrong.
She is an athlete, and she makes no apologies for the muscles, power and sweat that make her so.
Williams also has been vocal about the double standard that exists when it comes to the GOAT debate, a diminishment familiar to pretty much every woman.
‘‘If I were a man, I would have been in that conversation a long time ago,’’ Williams said in an interview with Common for ESPN’s The Undefeated in 2016.
‘‘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.
. . . I’ve been able to speak up for women’s rights because I think that gets lost in color or gets lost in cultures. Women make up so much of this world, and, yeah, if I were a man, I would have 100% been considered the greatest ever a long time ago.’’
After Williams nearly died giving birth to her daughter, she made a point to spotlight the discrimination and inequities that persist in maternal health care for Black women. When she learned that only 2% of venture-capital money was going to women, she started her own investment company. She said in Vogue that Serena Ventures now has funded 16 companies valued at $1 billion or more and that 78% of its portfolio are companies started by women or people of color.
Williams’ tennis career might be ending. But just as King, Ali and Russell did, she will continue to have influence and impact for many years to come.
The greatest athletes don’t simply win; they challenge our assumptions and change our world for the better. There is no more fitting description for Serena Williams than that.