US Open 2022: Serena Williams and the myth of passing the torch
NEW YORK — On the grounds of Wimbledon years ago, tennis was once described to me as “boxing without the punches.” The game may be more associated with the upper class and its country clubs, strawberries and cream and social gatherings over tea, but the analogy is nonetheless true: With the exception of boxing, there is no other sport so viscerally clear and unsentimental about victory and defeat. Two players. No help. No breaks. No teammates. One winner.
Ever since Serena Williams announced in Vogue earlier this month that she would retire from tennis after the US Open – after 27 years, 23 singles titles, 14 doubles titles, two mixed doubles titles and, for good measure, four Olympic gold medals – the air around her has been flooded with nothing but sentiment. Nearly 30 years professionally, Williams represents the unit as a dynasty, spanning six presidents, playing parts of four decades. For her fans who have been there from the beginning, her time, from braces to child, was their time, time and age create nostalgia and reflection for her and themselves. Her sponsors (remember Serena, the Puma years), kits (suits, 2002 Puma and 2018 Nike) and looks (beads, blonde) remind her followers not only of Serena’s rivalries (Hingis, Hingis, Hingis!) and victories (early 1-2 life vs. Sharapova, late 20-2), but where they were in their individual lives at the time, who they were as people and what they will become over the next quarter century. Like a living calendar, she was their constant.
For the past three weeks since the announcement, Serena has been history in tennis, and now the US Open has arrived.
She will open the tournament against 80th-ranked Dance Kovinic of Montenegro in Monday night’s session. The preparation for this moment has been a ritual – the ceremony on the court in Toronto, the testimonials from peers and players, the gracious and natural language surrounding her and her sport, the inevitable passing of the torch.
There are observers and there are performers. The observers relish the custom of this narrative: Williams, a grand slam champion, taking part for the last time in her home tournament, which she has won six times. The Open was where she won her first tournament, 23 years ago in 1999. Observers look ahead to teenage sensation Coco Gauff, perhaps, and see the line, as they did when Naomi Osaka beat Serena in a tense, uncomfortable 2018 US Open final. They see the elegiac poetry of the time.
For a performer, especially a fighter like Serena Williams, there is no poetry. The ritual asks the champion, a lion in winter, but still a lion, to play along. But passing the torch – consciously leaving the throne – goes against every instinct in the nature of the fighter and her future successors, who want nothing given to them. The poetry of the transition is a fairy tale. It is for the observers, for those who live and die and cheer in support. In sports, there is no passing of the torch, for while quitting sports may be voluntary, Serena’s viselike focus on excellence is no longer. She is currently ranked 410th in the world. She has played four matches this year and won only once, beating the lucky loser Nuria Parrizas-Diaz, ranked 57th. In the past two years, she has lost three times to an opponent ranked 100 or lower, and technically fourth when she withdrew with an injury in the second round of the 2020 French Open. It’s been seven years, 2015, since Serena played 10 tournaments in a year.
At Wimbledon, a tournament she has won seven times, she lost in the first round to Harmony Tan, the world No. 115. Against Top 15 players, Belinda Bencic in the first round in Toronto and Emma Raducanu in the first round in Cincinnati, she did not win a set. Raducanu took the last seven games of the match in a 6-4, 6-0 destruction. Serena is not choosing her successor, as the comforting ritualistic language suggests. She is the underdog. The torch is not passed. The torch is taken away and it is beyond her control.
When the Vogue article appeared, in addition to the tears and emotion of Serena’s fans, one of the thoughts repeated to me by many of her die-hard fans was the sadness of watching Serena get a beating at the hands of players she once cupped in her sleep, who had no interest in victoriously shaking her hand at the net. The prospect of watching their greatest champion lose to mediocre, if not below-average, players was too difficult to contemplate, and certainly to watch.
Tennis is boxing without punches. It was during one such exchange that I thought back to two dates: October 2, 1980 and June 10, 2016. The first was the night Larry Holmes destroyed Muhammad Ali in Las Vegas; the second, in Louisville, at Ali’s funeral. It was the penultimate fight of Ali’s career, and it was a sad massacre. Early in his career, Holmes was Ali’s sparring partner. He trained with Ali before what may have been Ali’s greatest triumph, defeating George Foreman in Zaire in 1974, the famous Rumble in the Jungle.
There was no passing of the torch from champion to protégé that night. Holmes beat Ali senseless. Ali was beaten, mercilessly, by his younger protégé, and Holmes cried fulfilling the ruthlessness of his professional responsibility, just as he cried at the funeral 36 years later. Ali was his idol. His hero. There was no ceremony involved. Ali’s removal from the throne was not pretty. It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t ritualistic, where each combatant plays a role and each comes out with his dignity, where everyone comes out better. It was terrifyingly sad. The final moment of Ali’s career, almost 18 months later in the Bahamas, was worse. When Trevor Berbick decimated what was left professionally of The Greatest, it was a relief. It wasn’t passing the torch. It was a mercy killing.
Observers need the ritual and its language of smooth, gracious and willing continuity. Passing the torch implies cooperation and acceptance, a mutual understanding that one’s time has passed. The observers need this because for them, the spectators, this defeat is actually part of their continuing journey, as there will be more matches in the future. The language breaks down into the notion that passing the torch requires the players to participate in a ritual, to come to terms with their eventual resignation from the throne. This narrative goes against the natural order of sports, and in this case, viewers want it to be the same: to celebrate the unsung champion players, to watch them fight to the end as they always have, but also to relinquish their position in the future. This doesn’t work, and that’s why the real final stage of the ritual is beatings, often severe ones. Other than winning the championship and walking off the stage, there is no third way.
In an essay for Vogue, Serena admitted that she is completely uncomfortable with her role in the drama. She doesn’t even want to use the word “retirement,” although her tennis life shows that’s what she’s about to do. She is not retiring,” she says. She prefers the term “evolve.”
Certainly the level of her talent is still so high that a dedicated Serena could still be a Top 40 player, maybe even better — except that Serena Williams plays to win tournaments. All of them. She doesn’t walk onto the court expecting to lose, to be mediocre, to reach the second week of a major and hope for the best. She doesn’t seem prone to failure like her sister Venus, a once great, seven-time champion who now routinely loses to players who will never achieve even one-eighth of what she did in her beautiful style.
My first year covering baseball full-time was 1998, and Serena was 16 years old. It was the year before she was to beat the great Steffi Graf, the year before she was to win her first tournament. That year I covered the Oakland A’s for the San Jose Mercury News. The left fielder was the great Rickey Henderson, the greatest leadoff hitter of all time, heading straight for the Hall of Fame. Rickey was no longer great. Pitchers who didn’t stand a chance against him when he was undefeated were now giving him fastballs – but it was stunning to see how much fire he had in him to compete, even in a weakened position. Rickey’s manager, Art Howe, watched and knew the truth: Rickey couldn’t play anymore. He was there.
“I was never a superstar like Rickey, but I played until I was 39. The reflexes start to fail, and you’re the only one who really knows how much you’re slipping,” – Howe told me.
“I would foul the ball and say: ‘Man, you should kill it. What’s wrong with you?’ It was frustrating more than anything else. In a way, it’s easier to say goodbye. You know you’re not yourself.”
And this is where this phenomenon of winning matches that were once never in doubt, or losing matches once unthinkable, can be necessary, useful, positive, affirming. In a way, these last matches in these last two weeks are an exercise in mourning and healing – both for Williams and her admirers. By playing, Williams creates closure for herself, knowing that flashes of her brilliance and self-confidence raise questions that can only be answered by stepping onto the court and either relishing or enduring the results. These are uncomfortable layers of ritual. Time awaits them all – Nadal and Djokovic, Serena and Federer. With no possibility of a future comeback, the last match of the great eight-time champion Roger Federer at Wimbledon ended in Federer’s defeat, a few weeks before his 40th birthday, in a straight set against Hubert Hurkacz, third set 6-0.
The current reigns of Nadal, Djokovic and Federer on the ATP Tour, with their 63 combined majors, stood (and in the case of Djokovic and Nadal, still stand) at the top because no one has pushed them over. After her pregnancy, Serena immediately came back and made four majors finals, but the next generation made their own. Osaki, Andreeski, Kerbery and Haleps came out on the court and beat her. This is the only way. There is no ambiguity at this stage, knowing that she may no longer be able to bend the tennis world to her will, but also knowing that new challenges await.
Her legions may gasp that the days of routinely crushing the Harmony Tans of the world are over, or ache for her that past dominance has passed and today may not be enough to defeat Andreescus, Osakas and Raducanus. But by choosing to announce her retirement, at this point, she is providing her fans with the service that so many have desperately wanted, to see her back on the stage, competing for victory – not of her own volition giving up the stage that has belonged to her for more than a quarter of a century.
There is and always will be a huge gap between the observers – those who emphasize narrative, history and poetry – and the performers, those who live the story and go out to fight. Passing the torch is a myth. At this stage of the journey, there is only defeat, either at the hands of younger, better opponents, or time, which is a ruthless and relentless task. Serena was once on the other end of this ruthless ritual, sending both Grafs, Hingis and Davenports into their next chapters. Even a magical, improbable victory at Flushing Meadows comes with the heavy cost of knowing there will be no more. At this stage of a professional athlete’s career, the end never stops, and the tennis chapter remains. For Serena, who is already energetically throwing herself into the world of venture capitalism, fashion, business and expanding her family, she is not reaching the end. She is reaching the beginning.