Serena laps up slam pressure
Serena Williams is embracing the suffocating pressure that seems the only threat to the ageless champion’s hopes of completing a fabled calendar-year grand slam sweep.
‘‘She doesn’t have a challenger,’’ former world No 1 Lindsay Davenport gushed after Williams subdued Spanish prodigy Garbine Muguruza 6-4 6-4 in yesterday’s Wimbledon final.
No time to waste, though, celebrating her sixth title at the All England Club – or a 21st career major and second ‘‘Serena Slam’’ – Williams immediately turned her focus to even bigger opportunities at next month’s US Open.
Williams houses all four grand slam singles trophies for the second time in her remarkable career, but the newlycrowned Wimbledon and reigning Australian, French and US champion is eyeing yet greater spoils.
The American will head to New York striving to become only the fourth woman in more than a century of grand slam tennis to win all four majors in the same year.
The spotlight will be intense, but Williams insists the pressure won’t undermine her chances of joining Maureen Connolly (1953), Margaret Smith Court (1970) and Steffi Graf (1988) in one of world sport’s most exclusive clubs.
‘‘I feel like if I can do the Serena Slam, I will be OK heading into the grand slam,’’ she said.
‘‘Like I always say, there’s 127 other people that don’t want to see me win. Nothing personal, they just want to win.
‘‘I had a really tough draw here. This gives me confidence that if I had this draw, I can do it again. I really don’t feel like I have anything to lose. I’ve kind of solidified my place at No 1.
If Williams reigns at Flushing Meadows for a seventh time, she will head to the Australian Open at Melbourne in January with the chance to eclipse Graf’s benchmark 22 grand slam titles and enhance her status as arguably the greatest women’s player of all time.
‘‘You’ve got to enjoy this. You’re looking at arguably the greatest female athlete in maybe the last 50 years. Not just in tennis. All sports,’’ John McEnroe marvelled after Williams also became the oldest grand slam singles champion in the open era with her straight-sets defeat of Muguruza.
At 33 years and 289 days old, Williams is 26 days older than Martina Navratilova was when she landed the last of her record nine titles at the All England Club in 1990.
But she craves more and credits a newfound passion for ‘‘contemporary dancing’’ as the reason for still feeling young enough to compete with — and beat— rivals across three generations.
‘‘I’ve never loved working out,’’ Williams said after 21-year-old Muguruza became her 13th different grand slam final scalp since beating Martina Hingis at the 1999 US Open at just 17.
‘‘I feel like I can do more than I did 10, 12, whatever years ago. I just think I just keep reinventing myself in terms of working out, in terms of my game.