What if it wasn’t a foot fault? What if she hadn’t jarred her ankle? What if she converted one of her four match points? Once again Serena Williams’ grand slam campaign has been a case of so near, but so far.
Taking on Karolina Pliskova on the Rod Laver Arena, 37-year-old Williams was on the verge of booking a place in the Australian Open semi-finals. Leading 5-1 in the decider, a sequence of dramatic events combined with some stern resistance from across the court denied her. On her first match point, the American appeared to have fired an ace to seal victory, but it was deemed a foot fault by the linesman. In the next point, she jarred her ankle in what the start of her undoing. Enabling Pliskova, who is still unbeaten in 2019, to roar her way back to clinch the match in dramatic fashion with the help of a six-game winning streak.
“I think honestly she didn’t start playing until she was down match point. I think she really gave it her all at that point. I don’t think giving up was an option for her.” Williams said in tribute to Pliskova.
“At that point I’m just trying to think, Okay, win some points, win this game. Then I had a couple more match points on her serve. Naturally I thought, All right, here we go, you’re going to win one of these.’
“That clearly didn’t happen, but I was just trying at that point.”
Since her comeback from giving birth to her first child, grand slam tennis has been nothing but heartbreaking for the American. At the French Open she reached the fourth round before withdrawing due to a Pectoral injury. At Wimbledon she eased into the final before imploding against a dominant Angelique Kerber. Flushing Meadows saw her engage in a heated confrontation with umpire Carlos Ramos, which ended up in her being docked an entire game in the final and later fined $17,000 for unsportsmanlike conduct. Now in Melbourne she squandered a 5-1 lead in the decider against Pliskova.
It is almost as if a spell has been cast upon Williams by Margaret Court, who currently holds the record for most grand slam singles titles at 24. Williams is currently on 23. Nevertheless, the always resilient Williams refuses to be down. Already stating her desire to equal Court’s record at the next major.
“Right now would be Roland Garros because that’s the next one, the next Grand Slam for me. I mean, 22 is close, 23 wasn’t close, but 22 was close for a long time. 18 was close forever. Yeah, we’ll see.” She commented about her grand slam tally.
More play, more success?
Since returning to the WTA Tour in March, Williams has stuck to a limited schedule. In fact, she has only played in four tournaments (excluding Hopman Cup) outside of the majors. All of which has been in America. Some would argue that somebody of her calibre and maturity doesn’t need a Dominic Thiem-like schedule. On the other hand, is the lack of match play hindering her performance?
“We (my team) haven’t really discussed our tournament schedule, to be honest. Maybe that’s something we should discuss.” Williams replied when asked about expanding her schedule.
“We’re kind of just going with the flow, what we’ve played throughout the years, not really changing too much of that.”
Once the most dominant figure in women’s tennis by a considerable margin, Williams believes it will take time for her to hit full throttle. Although she has already shown glimpses of her true talent in recent days. Illustrated by her first set annihilation of world No.1 Simona Halep during their fourth round meeting in Melbourne. So far in her career, Williams has won 72 WTA trophies and spent 319 weeks as world No.1
“I know there’s a lot of things that I need to do, a lot of things I need to do to get better, a lot of maybe more just matches. I don’t know.” She analysed.
“I just feel like as close as I want to say that I’m there, I know that there’s a lot more that I need to do to kind of get there. 10 months, soon to be 11 months, soon it will be 12 months. It just takes time.”
The time is there, but the question is how much longer does she have left? Williams is currently the fourth oldest player to have a WTA ranking. This doesn’t mean that the end of her career is near, but not even the greats of the sport can go on playing forever.
This may be why chasing after major title No.24 might be one of the most challenging obstacles in Williams’ illustrious and record-breaking career.
