Serena heading to Toronto on hot streak

TORONTO— Back to being the most dominant women’s tennis player in the world, Serena Williams holds all four Grand Slam trophies at the same time, the second “Serena Slam” of her career. Yet she has one more career achievement ahead of her. After already winning the Australian Open, the French Open and Wimbledon in 2015, Williams is another U.S. Open title away from being just the fourth woman to earn a calendar-year Grand Slam.

Before she gets to Flushing Meadows, though, Williams has a hardcourt tune-up at the Rogers Cup in Toronto starting Aug. 10.

“This will be a good opportunity for me to get some matches under hard court and try to go forward with just winning some matches there and getting ready for the U.S. Open, which I’m defending that title, so hopefully I’ll be able to do that,” Williams said on a conference call Thursday.

Williams won the Rogers Cup each of the past two times it was held in Toronto, in 2013 and 2011, and called it one of her favourite places to play.

Now 33, Williams is again ranked No. 1 and is playing some of the best tennis of her life. But according to her, her game is just “OK.”

“I’m just playing some of my best mental tennis,” Williams said. “But I feel like my actual tennis I could play a lot better.”

Her actual tennis appears to be just fine. Williams lost only two sets in winning Wimbledon and is primed to capture her seventh U.S. Open.

Trying not to be overconfident, she said being too comfortable makes players more “susceptible to losing.” Along the same lines, Williams is attempting not to think about the history she’s approaching.

Her focus was first on winning all four Grand Slams in a row, the socalled “Serena Slam” that she also completed in 2002-03.

“Once I felt like I could win four in a row, I felt like I would be fine,” Williams said. “Just holding all four trophies at the same time, two times in one career, I’m not sure that’s been done so often. For me, that is really pretty awesome.”

Williams became the fifth woman to do that, joining Maureen Connolly Brinker, Margaret Court, Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova. The calendar-year Grand Slam is even rarer, completed by Connolly Brinker in 1953, Court in 1970 and Graf in 1988.