When September Ends: Serena at 30 |
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 oh, how do you solve a problem like Serena? Or perhaps better put, how does Serena solve her problems? And not so much physical or health issues—though those were glaring and headline-snagging for months on end—but more complicated matters.We live in strange days. The best active WTA player—and indeed, Serena remains the one to beat—is a still-young woman given to emotional, even confessional discourse. She is equal parts UNICEF and HSN, an ambassador and also someone who hawks her own line of designer bags. (Her latest fine, for verbal abuse of the chair umpire, was $2,000, similar to the price of one of those bags.) She seems prone to insomnia and has despaired openly and plaintively to the likes of Oprah about her love life, or lack thereof. Footage of her booty-dancing (in her royal-blue U.S. Open dress, no less) to the likes of Trey Songz and Lil Wayne tracks surfaced on YouTube in the wake of her U.S. Open "meltdown." (It was not flattering, the video or the dancing itself, and was promptly pulled.) The woman remains an enigma, maybe even to herself. Indeed, today is Serena Williams's thirtieth birthday. Not that she marks it, devout Jehovah's Witness that she is. Earlier this September, musician, mogul, and mom-to-be BeyoncĂ© Knowles turned 30 as well. This is notable because both are powerful young women, in more ways than one. They know what they want as professional success goes, and then they go out and take it. Is it just me, or is anyone else out there in the 20s-to-30s crowd feeling a bit of an underachiever today? The facts speak for themselves: Serena has 13 Grand Slam titles, more than Monica Seles or Billie Jean King and within striking distance of Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert's 18 each. Time and again, she's crept—yea, swept—back from the brink, from the mid-100s in the rankings and from freak injuries and maladies, to contend at the Slams. In an age in which the majors seem to confound other top stars (see: Wozniacki, Zvonareva, et al), the younger Williams sister lives for those elite events. Lives and dies by them, that is, as evidenced by the incidents at this month's U.S. Open women's singles final. Too often still, Serena comes unraveled at precisely the wrong time, just when she could or should be making a move to right her ship in a high-stakes match. She prattles on in the language of angry, anguished middle-school bullying to those in authority, namely chair umpires and line judges. Frankly, it seems that Serena feels the tennis establishment has it out for her at this point, and no more so than at her home Slam event. With the authority of a Monday-morning armchair sports psychologist, I can say that she seems to feel assailed. Maligned. Persecuted. Surely these are charged words, but they ring true as you watch her face when she becomes upset. The world has been unkind to the Williamses. Their tragedy is well documented, even recently in brief by their own. Even so, Serena can yet be the phoenix. Maybe she feels the heat, the pressure to perform at or near levels where she has previously shown her brilliance when wielding the axe that is her racquet. Mary Carillo said that Serena's 2010 Wimbledon performance, culminating with a throttling of Vera Zvonareva in the final, was the best that she's ever seen her play. But Serena had threatened to literally throttle a line judge at the previous U.S. Open, and the rest is her infamous history. At some point she must stop atoning for it, or being forced to, but she has done herself next to no favors in word and deed since then. Instead, we had the volatile, polarizing No. 1 American woman in tennis, on the anniversary of 9/11, telling a Greek chair umpire that she was "unattractive inside." The pressures of family seem normal enough. Richard Williams and Oracene Price love their daughters, and Venus Williams is surely an indefatigable companion and sibling even as her own body presses her with the weight and the constraints of her Sjogren's Syndrome condition. Perhaps then Serena feels some seething, underlying stress to show her second-tier famous friends what she can do on the stage that she has owned and entertained on so many times. Kim Kardashian. Ciara. Kelly Rowland. Common. John Legend. On and on. So even if Serena can't correctly spell her U.S. Open opponent's surname, she can and (says here) will once again rise to the apex of the game. Because who else is going to take it? She has tasted and seen what fame and fortune come to one who excels. Now, as she gets up in (tennis) years, she will wish to cement her place for all of time. If there's anything that Serena Williams wants, it's to feel immortal. | |
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When September Ends: Serena at 30
When September Ends: Serena at 30
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