Serena Williams falls at US Open, likely ending one of the most storied careers in tennis | Opinion
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Her body may be diminished by age and injury and all the natural things that happen at age 40, but on Friday night, everyone in the arena got one final glimpse into Williams’ sporting soul. And though she did not win the match against 46th-ranked Ajla Tomljanovic, it would be hard to call what happened over these 3 hours and 4 minutes a loss.
The score said Tomljanovic won, 7-5, 6-7, 6-1. She’ll move on to the fourth round of the tournament. Williams will move on.
But after months, maybe years of knowing that time was running out, Williams finally felt what that was like on a tennis court Friday against a much younger player with just as much power and the guts to handle everything the New York crowd could throw at her. To even give herself a chance, Williams had to find something even greater than all the talent and determination that won her 23 Grand Slams.
What she found was the anger to push herself into one more thundering serve, one more all-out return, one more screaming forehand. And it was nearly enough. So, so nearly enough.
“I’m literally playing my way into this and getting better,” she said through tears on court after the match, but she still didn’t say the word “retire” when asked if she’d reconsider her decision. “I should have started sooner this year. I don’t think so, but you never know. I don’t know.”
It was going to take a lot of things to get Williams to the finish line seven times in this tournament. If her first match was about survival of nerves and her second was about turning back the clock, Friday was about channeling the frustration of being 40 and not as good as she used to be into something that could somehow win her one more match.
Williams was upset with herself for letting the first set slip away after serving for it at 5-3. But she had no intention of accepting the sting of defeat meekly. She was too ticked off for that, anyway. If this was really the end, she was going to go out swinging — literally.
And though it didn’t end the way almost anybody in Ashe Stadium wanted, Williams’ final angry push made this an epic that she will hopefully look back on as a fitting tribute to the champion she was and will always be.
In the end, time just wouldn’t cooperate. Neither would Tomljanovic.
“I’m feeling really sorry just because I love Serena just as much as you guys do. What she’s done for me, for the sport of tennis is incredible and I never thought that I’d have a chance to play her in her last match,” Tomljanovic said on court.
Tennis matches can take a million paths, and there’s a very clear moment when this one took a route that both bolstered Williams’ legend and likely crushed her chances of playing in the U.S. Open’s second week.
For a moment, when Williams belted the ball with all the power and frustration she could muster to take a 4-0 lead in the second set, it seemed like she might have wrested control. At the very least, it was going to go into a third set where anything might happen. For the first time all night, Tomljanovic was on her heels and shaking her head.
The crowd had been roused to ecstasy. And suddenly Tomljanovic was facing a ravenous, vintage Serena who looked ready to grab this tournament like it belonged to her.
But all those long rallies, all the giant rips at the ball, all the mental fatigue of knowing what was at stake had conspired to leave Williams as vulnerable as a boxer staggering around the ring after throwing a flurry of punches that didn’t land.
When Williams put away a forehand for a 5-2 lead, fighting off a tough game where Tomljanovic threatened to break, she let out a primal scream that suggested a result much different than the one Williams ultimately had to accept.
But the next game — a 24-point marathon — was the last thing Williams needed. Had she put away the set right there, perhaps everything changes. Tomljanovic, though, just wouldn’t let it go. When she finally held serve, it was a body blow for which Williams was going to pay a physical price.
Williams ultimately won the set in a breathtaking tiebreaker, cracking a few more perfect forehands that cracked open the door of hope just a little wider. She even broke Tomljanovic’s serve in the first game of the third set for good measure.
But the damage was piling up. Williams’ competitive stamina was waning. And Tomljanovic simply would not fold.
At 5-1 in the third set, understanding the inevitable was about to happen, the crowd gave Williams one more standing ovation. And she gave them five more match points fought off in another game of spellbinding determination and grit before finally yielding.
“I just thought she would beat me, so the pressure wasn’t on me. She’s Serena. Even to the last point, she’s in a really good position to win, even when she’s down 5-1,” Tomljanovic said.
“I don’t know how many match points I needed to finish it off, but that’s just who she is. She’s the greatest of all time. Period.”
There was no disgrace in ending it this way. Williams was terrific, epic really. Tomljanovic was younger, a tiny bit better and most of all unrelenting in the biggest moment of her career. There is never an easy way to say goodbye. But short of holding a trophy, seeing Williams dig as deep as she could one more time turned that eerie silence into an indescribable burst of energy that can never be erased.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Dan Wolken on Twitter @DanWolken