Serena’s comeback on skid row for now, but don’t write her off just yet
But the Williams enterprise isn’t ready to retire just yet
● Serena Williams hasn’t had it easy since coming back after giving birth to baby Olympia this year and dealing with health complications. She’s played just five tournaments, mostly going out in the first few rounds. Except for Wimbledon, where — like Tiger Woods at the PGA Championship — Williams surged into the final stretch, in a surprise, exciting return to form, making it to the finals against recent odds.
Despite the loss to Germany’s Angelique Kerber in London, Williams’s performance at the All England Club signalled that the 23time grand slam champ is back, and a contender for titles.
But the Wimbledon loss seems to have affected the tennis legend as well. Williams followed Wimbledon with her worst loss on the WTA tour, being crushed by England’s Johanna Konta in just 52 minutes in San Jose a few weeks ago, 1-6 0-6. But at the Western and Southern opening round, she defeated opponent Daria Gavrilova in straight sets, 6-1 6-2, in dominating fashion. Gavrilova is ranked No23, and the victory over her was by all accounts an indicator of Williams’s confidence going into her warm-up to the US Open. She looked strong in the set with Petra Kvitova, rallying in the second to even it out before running out of gas in the third.
Still, Williams is back in the top 30, ranked as high as 27 after her resurgent drive at Wimbledon. She was seeded at the grass grand slam and will probably be seeded at the US Open. Her rise to fitness will continue to reward her with ranking increases.
“I’m still at the very beginning. You know, this is a long comeback. I just began. Definitely at the very, very beginning,” Williams said after the match. “I’m getting there, and I’m going to just continue to work hard, and hopefully I’ll start winning more matches.”
The loss in Cincinnati may be a tough blow to the 36-year-old, but we all know that the sports icon always brings her A game to the grand slams.
Unnamed distractions
She went out in the third round at Indian Wells and the first in Miami, but somehow was able to dig deep and progress to the fourth round in Roland Garros, defeating two top 20 players along the way.
She is still considered the major contender for the US Open where she will be going for her seventh title at Flushing Meadows, which would equal the number of slam titles she owns from Australia and Wimbledon each — an impressive statistic.
Rafa Nadal only surpasses her with just the French Open titles, Roger Federer with just his Wimbledon tally. Williams stands alone with her hat-trick dominance over the Australian, US Open, and Wimbledon slams.
After those disappointments of late, Williams cited unnamed “distractions” as well as lingering postpartum depression as contributing factors to her poor play.
The worrying thing for the Williams camp will be that unless she takes a wild card into this week’s hardcourt event in New Haven, she will be forced to reboot her comeback under the glare of the US Open spotlights.
Williams isn’t panicking. “I'm still at the very beginning; this is a long comeback,” she told reporters in Cincinnati after she lost.
The comment may sound a bit defensive, because Serena has been at it since March. Her words demonstrate there’s nothing selfdefeating about her sentiments. The familiar pluck and determination that fuelled so many other revivals for her are undiminished. But the inconsistency in her play has to be worrying, given how she has failed to build on her success at Wimbledon.
“[I need a] more consistent serve more than anything,” Williams said, adding that she needs to do the same on her return. “Basically my whole game needs to improve.”
There’s an alternate theory to consider: Kvitova is playing smoking-hot tennis — so much so that on current form she would have posed a serious threat to Williams at any stage of her glorious career. This will go down as a second-round loss for Williams, though it had the electric atmosphere of an epic grand slam final.
Kvitova, a lean, 1.8m tall Czech, is also trying to reestablish herself at or near the top. Her comeback follows a home invasion and knife attack before the start of the 2017 season that required surgery on her left hand.
Smoking hot Kvitova
Her return to the top hasn’t been a sensational overnight revival, either. But this season, in her 14th month back on the tour, Kvitova looks more fit than ever, and her game is crisp and sparkling.
“I tend to be a perfectionist,” Williams mused after her match against Kvitova. “I like to do things that are of a standard that is maybe unrealistic — and that includes [when I’m] being a mom.” Right now, a triumphant US Open for Williams may seem one of those unrealistic expectations. But she’s been there before, and we’ve seen how that’s turned out for her challengers. — fansided.com and espn.com