Serena Williams came to Wimbledon 2021 an odds-on favorite, but she’s leaving just as her bid began, after a leg injury on the Kicking Names and Taking Ass T-Shirt and by the same token and famed Centre Court forced her to withdraw from the tournament on Tuesday. Williams had tried to play through the pain but ended up falling to her knees, crying out in agony. She’d arrived looking regal in a white, detachable train. She walked off no less majestic, waving in tears as the crowd rose in a standing ovation. “I was heartbroken,” Williams later wrote on Instagram.I was too. Every time Serena Williams suffers a setback, it physically hurts my heart. It crushes me when my fellow 39-year-old loses to the (also fantastic) 23-year-old Naomi Osaka. It wounded me when, during one of those Osaka defeats at the 2018 U.S. Open, an umpire thrice penalized Williams for vocally contesting a code violation accusing her of receiving coaching from the stands—never mind tennis’s notoriously fiery male personalities. The prim, lily-white world of pro tennis has always been at least a little inhospitable to the Black champion from Compton, beginning with early racist jeers. And yet she never quits.But my emotional investment in Williams is less about the technical tennis and more about, excuse the phrase, the journey Williams has embarked on since giving birth to her daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr., in 2017: to win a Grand Slam as a mother and tie Margaret Court’s all-time record for the most major singles wins in history. Williams won the last of her 23 titles at the 2017 Australian Open, just a few days after she learned she was pregnant. She could have withdrawn then, of course. She played anyway.My emotional investment in Williams is less about the technical tennis and more about, excuse the phrase, the journey. Williams is exceptional. In so many ways, she is unlike me or any mere normie, but her quest makes her feel—in my perhaps delusional, projecting mind—like she is all of us: Every mother striving to come back to work, to not lose her place in the industry, to be as great at her job as she ever was before her brain and body began momming. Returning from maternity leave is universally difficult, but so many common struggles have been magnified in Williams’s case. First, she recovered from a C-section delivery and blood clots on her lungs—a complication that she had to press doctors into discovering, a potent reminder of the Black maternal-health crisis. Then she had surgery to repair the opening of her C-section scar, which revealed a hematoma in her abdomen. Later, she was advised that breastfeeding was keeping her from losing weight deemed crucial to regain her speed and on-court prowess. As soon as she was able, Williams launched into grueling daily training sessions to return to form, but like many moms, she grappled with leaving her baby. When it comes to winning Grand Slams, “training has to be her number one priority,” her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, say in the Being Serena trailer, just as baby Olympia crawls across the camera shot.Being Serena, the HBO documentary, is imprinted on my heart. It’s the story of a pregnant woman, and then a new mother, who “always wanted to start a family. I’ve always envisioned myself as a mom,” Williams says in the docuseries. At the same time, careerwise, she is fiercely competitive, perhaps most of all with herself, describing a “beast” inside her. “I put so much pressure on myself,” she says. “I wanna make sure that I’m the best.” Williams wears her ambition on her sleeve in a way that makes me feel seen. She is every mother who doesn’t actually want to scale back her career after having kids, no matter how hard it is—every one of us who rejects the idea that motherhood should kill our biggest dreams and make them feel untenable.“I’m not coming back to come back,” Williams says in Being Serena. “I’m coming back to win.” Sometimes I feel like there’s a beast inside me too, one that is never satisfied. I only want to do bigger stories, to publish the book I’ve been working on for years and ones I haven’t even thought of yet, even if I don’t have unlimited time and brain space to do it, in part because I am a mother to two kids I adore.There is very little precedent for mothers winning Grand Slams. (Court won the last three of her 24 Grand Slam singles titles as a mother; Belgian player Kim Clijsters returned from childbirth and retirement to win three titles between 2009 and 2011.) It pains me to think about Williams’s male counterparts, how they keep winning and winning uninterrupted, their bodies never experiencing seismic changes from the inside out. But Williams has always been a kind of exception to the rule, in the best way possible.It’s not Williams’s job to succeed to prove to the rest of us that we can too. That’s too great a burden for her or anyone to carry. Not to mention that she’s already achieved so much: She really doesn’t have anything to prove. Fans and followers don’t know if this Wimbledon might have been Williams’s last, even if they persist in speculating. (As Williams herself acknowledged in her pretournament press conference, most pro players retire by 32.) But as long as she’s playing, I’ll be rooting for her, and crying along with her, every step of the way.
Kicking Names and Taking Ass T-Shirt, hoodie, tank top, sweater and long sleeve t-shirt
After calling off last year’s tournament due to COVID-19, the Kicking Names and Taking Ass T-Shirt and by the same token and All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club—and why is it, by the way, that we hear so little about its croquet?—today kicks off the 2021 installment of what the tennis world calls, simply, Wimbledon. Will there be fans? Yes—they’ll have to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative PCR test to be admitted, and capacity will be kept at about half, until the finals, which will be at full capacity.As for the on-court action: Is this Serena Williams’s tournament to lose? In a word, yes, though that doesn’t mean a record-tying 24th Grand Slam is a slam dunk for her by any means. Vastly in her favor is the fact that some key would-be challengers of hers aren’t playing: After leaving the French Open early, Naomi Osaka has opted to skip Wimbledon; Simona Halep, the defending champion, since she beat Serena in the 2019 final on Centre Court, is out with a calf injury; and while the world’s number one–ranked player, Ash Barty, is putting a brave face on the aftermath of her recent hip injury, it seems doubtful that she’s going to be playing at 100% throughout the two-week tournament.Still, there’s a handful of players in Serena’s quarter of the bracket who could derail her path to the semis—Angelique Kerber, Elina Svitolina, and Coco Gauff among them. It would seem like Serena’s power, her massive serve, and the shorter points (grass, for the uninitiated, is the fastest surface of any of the Grand Slams) would all seem to favor her on what has been her favorite and most successful surface to play on.It’s likely going to come down to fitness—both physical and mental. Serena hasn’t been playing a ton of tournaments and, at 39, it’s a real question whether or not she can summon the will to win seven matches one after the other to claim a historic victory. TLDR? Don’t bet against her, but keep an eye on two-time champion Petra Kvitová and 2017 Wimbledon winner Garbiñe Muguruza.On the men’s side, with Rafael Nadal opting to sit the tournament out to “rest”—there’s chatter on the tour that he’s suffering from a serious foot injury but is simply too gentlemanly to use that as a crutch to explain his semifinal defeat at the French Open at the hands of Novak Djokovic—there are a few story lines worth following: Can Roger Federer, at the age of 39, extend his record at his favorite tournament to nine titles? Can Stefanos Tsitsipas translate his Slam success on French clay onto Wimbledon’s ryegrass? Can the home-country favorite, Andy Murray, rise to the occasion for a third time after a lengthy spell away from the game due to injury?So, yes, there are a lot of questions—and then there’s essentially one question: How can Djokovic, the world’s number one–ranked player fresh off an epic victory at the French Open and seemingly playing at the top of his game at 34, not win this year’s Wimbledon? (A win here would tie Djokovic with Federer and Nadal at 20 career Grand Slams each—itself a mind-boggling thing to behold.) He’s that rare veteran player who seems to play with the mental and physical intensity of a journeyman with a chip on his shoulder and something to prove, and he seems unhampered at the moment by injury, fatigue, doldrums, complacency, or much of anything—or anybody—else that can get in his way.Except for one guy—and yes, that guy is Roger Federer. Fingers crossed they meet in the finals. (One more quick thing: When is the last time you watched mixed doubles? Well, the thrillingly unpredictable Nick Kyrgios is pairing up with Venus Williams to have a go at it here—well worth a look.)Enjoy the tournament.
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