- #Serena williams locked herself in saferoom how to
- #Serena williams locked herself in saferoom professional
Open.īy next year’s Australian Open, she will be 39. She said Thursday she plans on going to Paris and playing the French Open, which is played on a more difficult surface for her than the fast courts at the U.S. There is no way to compare Margaret Court’s 24 Grand Slams in a totally different era to Williams’ 23, particularly given that Court won 13 of them before the so-called Open era when only amateurs were allowed to compete.īut reaching that number seems to have at least some impact on Williams continuing to grind for these titles. Whether that number means anything to her legacy is up for debate. It just so happens that this time she got beat.Īt this point, we all have to acknowledge the odds are against Williams getting No.
Serena shouldn’t have any regrets about how she played on the contrary, it’s how she should try to play more often in high-stakes matches. That’s about as well as anyone could play against Williams under those circumstances. In the third, she made 75 percent of her first serves and had just six errors. In the second set, she had 12 winners and one unforced error.
#Serena williams locked herself in saferoom how to
Williams didn’t play much differently in the second and third sets Azarenka just figured out how to absorb it. Everything was going her way, and against most opponents, that would have been more than enough.īut Azarenka, despite losing far more to Williams than she has won over the years, is one of the few with the self-belief to turn a match like that around. She was stepping in on the return and hitting clean winners. For a set, Williams was blasting Azarenka off the court with power and precision. After 23 Grand Slam titles - the most in the Open Era - it’s time to go for broke and let the chips fall where they may. That’s the way she has to play against a top-level opponent if she’s going to win another Grand Slam.
#Serena williams locked herself in saferoom professional
Given everything Williams has accomplished and the plain reality that she isn’t physically what she used to be - Who is after more than 20 years playing professional tennis? - that is the blueprint. There was nothing nervous or tight about the way Williams was playing. She was hitting the ball so hard, it looked like she was practically throwing her body into every ground stroke. Unlike her earlier performances, Williams came out determined to start fast and play aggressively. That’s what made Thursday’s first set so breathtaking. Open and the two tournaments that preceded it, that her level of play was not particularly high. Her three-set quarterfinal against Tsvetana Pironkova was anything but straightforward. She survived being down a break in the third set against Maria Sakkari in the fourth round. She’d come from a set down in the third round to beat Sloane Stephens. This time, just getting to the semifinals had been a real labor. For some reason, Serena has often played in these big matches over the last few years as if she had something to lose.ĪNALYSIS: Why Serena just missed her last, best chance at No. The advantage of being considered the greatest player of all time is that you don’t really need to win anymore. With each opportunity that passes by, the window closes that much more.īut the odd thing about watching Williams try and fail to get one more is how often it seems like she walked on the court as if she felt the pressure of trying to win her first. At age 38, the reason she’s out there is to add Grand Slams to her legacy, including winning one as a mother. Maybe that’s not much of a consolation for Williams. At every big moment, she grunted and screamed and pumped herself up. She didn’t just hit groundstrokes, she walloped them. It wasn’t about playing passively as she did in the Wimbledon final last year or losing rhythm on her serve as she did last year at the U.S. But at least she went for it.įor once in the post-motherhood portion of her career, this wasn’t Williams getting tight in a big match and spraying errors all over the court as she has in recent Grand Slam finals. In an extraordinary semifinal that looked for awhile as if it would be hers, Williams lost to Vika Azarenka, 1-6, 6-3, 6-3. No, Williams will not win her coveted Grand Slam title No. By this point in Serena Williams’ career, where every match she plays should be considered gravy, that’s really all you can ask.
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