Almost before she had finished her centre court twirl and well practiced wave, Serena Williams was moving on. Before she had left the All England Club after beating Spain's Garbine Muguruza 6-4, 6-4 the Williams machine had turned its mind towards the US Open and what has now become a naked rather than covert assault on tennis history and Steffi Graf's record of 22 Grand Slam wins.
At 33 years of age, far from hinting at slowing down, Williams struck fear into women’s tennis. She is, she says, moving better, feeling stronger and will be back next year at 34 years old to dominate a field that has gained precious little ground on her.
More admired and respected than loved by the fans, she has already skewed the numbers by the amount of success she has had since hitting 30 years old. She has made age less of an enemy than it had been in the past.
Seven of her Grand Slams have come at 30 years old or more. Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova had one title and Graf didn't win a Grand Slam after the age of 29. The German had won five as a teenager and one of those at 17 years old.
Williams won one major as a teenager, the 1999 US Open, the first on a road that has taken her to this point as the oldest women’s singles champion in the Open era.
“I’m officially the eldest? Cool. I feel great,” she said. “I definitely don’t feel old. I think in life I’m still pretty young. You know, I think, like I always say, with new technology, new workouts, all this other stuff, I think the life of an athlete is changing and the longevity is becoming longer.
‘Better now’
“I feel almost better now. I mean, I do have some aches and pains. But overall physically I feel like I’m better. I feel like I’m more fit. I feel like I can do more than I did 10, 12, years ago.”
She has proved nothing if not durable given the run of injury after winning her fourth Wimbledon title in July 2010, when she stepped on broken glass leaving a restaurant in Germany and injured a tendon in her right foot.
The cut required surgery and she had planned to return to tennis that year but reinjured the foot and had a second operation in October. Still rehabbing from the cut, in February 2011, she suffered a pulmonary embolism (a blood clot in her lung) after flying from New York to Los Angeles and was immobilized for six months. She later developed a hematoma in her stomach after she had given herself an injection of blood-thinning medication.
Four years on she has no real tennis rivals. Sharapova maybe ranked two in the world but is very much second best, while her older sister Venus, who was her main rival for years, continues to fight an autoimmune illness.
Williams record for this season sits at 39 wins and one loss, which is phenomenal. The success has renewed confidence, opened her eyes to future possibilities. Only three women in history have managed a calendar year Grand Slam, which is winning all four majors in the one season: Maureen Connolly in 1953, Margaret Court in 1970 and Graf in 1988 did it, Connolly and Court achieving it when the top players frequently did not travel to the Australian Open.
“I’m just living for the moment,” said Williams. “Obviously I’ll be here next year, God willing, to try to defend my title.”
The magnitude
Not until then and maybe not until long after that will she start to begin to live and relish the moments and the magnitude of what she is currently achieving. Currently in the maw of that struggle it’s too early to begin to look back.
“Not yet. One day, if I ever retire, I’ll definitely look back,” she says. “Right now I’m really into just continuing to be the greatest champion that I can be and the best player and the best role model that I can be.”
Despite the routine scoreline, victory did not come smoothly to Williams. Muguruza, showed in flashes that Williams can be vulnerable in the opening exchanges and took a 4-2 lead in the first set. But serving for the title at 5-1 in the second set, she again lost rhythm and with the Centre Court crowd strongly behind the underdog Muguruza, the Spaniard managed to break Williams twice in a row to get back on serve to 5-4.
That was the peak of the revival as Muguruza lost her serve to love, missing a forehand wide on Williams’s second match point to send the American on to New York with renewed purpose and clarity.
