Serena Makes Me Feel and Care

I was slow to the adoration of Serena Williams. In truth, my preferences for certain female tennis players was strongly (I’m a Neanderthal, it’s what I do) influenced by what the players looked like. While I had some appreciation for young Serena Williams as a tennis player, I drooled over Maria Sharapova (and countless others, to be fair). It didn’t matter that Serena mopped the courts with these women. I mean, did you see the photographs of Anna Kournikova!?

I have grown, of course, as we all must (or become MAGA ingrates trying to conduct a violent religious national takeover, but that’s a different thing). I suppose I first accepted Serena as a great tennis player over a decade ago, when she was nearing thirty and still proving to be better than the teenagers and young twenty-somethings who challenged her.

I found her confidence a little abrasive, and I confess, there was likely some insidious internal racism going on there. Also, she made mince meat of Sharapova and I never got over that. But, as she got older, thicker, (obviously all muscle, though the doubters like me wondered if she were getting fat and unfit) and retained all the shots in her arsenal, I gave way. I recognized that she was special.

Last night, I tuned in for her takedown of the second-ranked player in the world in the second round of the US Open. I am not one who ever has wished he could be in a tennis audience, but man, that crowd was outstanding, and helped to make watching her win exciting and emotional.

And it was emotional. At the end of the match, the US Open have bought in to letting ESPN hold things up and run a brief interview conducted by Mary Jo Fernandez and an Oprah-narrated testimonial of gratitude (gratuitous?), which may be played after every Serena match in this tournament. The questions weren’t exacting or interesting, but I very much enjoyed Serena’s answers. “You beat the second-ranked player in the world…” “I’m a pretty good player, too,” she responded with an expression of not-quite derision, but some obvious questioning of the ranking systems in place. She tipped her hat to the crowd, who had been raucous, loud, and Serena-strong the entire time that I watched.

Serena is over forty, and has announced her “evolution beyond tennis,” also known as retirement from playing the game professionally. It would be quite something if she can finish her career with a US Open victory. I don’t know if she’s playing well enough to win the tournament, and age and fitness do matter, but as she noted in one of her answers, she is a good player, and has been here before. She’s seen it all, even if she’s playing against competition who are new to her. She lost last night’s second set, only to rebound and dominate the final set. She could win again.

And I’m here for it. I will be watching the rest of the way, and win or lose, I’ll be there cheering and crying when it’s over.