The unrivaled dominance of Serena Williams

As Serena Williams took Victoria Azarenka to the woodshed in the first set of their US Open final yesterday, it was hard to suppress the feeling that had been growing all summer. With every ace slammed down the T, every backhand that scorched the court on its way for a winner, every forehand that left Azarenka desperately (and futilely) lunging to get a racquet on the ball, and every yell of “Come on!” that Serena ripped apart the air with, the suspicion mounted even further. And after she broke Azarenka once more to pocket the set 6-2, the question couldn’t be escaped any further.

Is Serena Williams the most dominant player, male or female, to have ever picked up a racquet?

As things would turn out, the answer wouldn’t come to us as swiftly as we expected. When Azarenka broke Serena’s serve to start the second set, it became obvious that this wasn’t going to be a complete blowout. Maybe the Belarussian could win three, even four games in the set? Azarenka wasn’t thinking in such small terms, though: she dug her heels in, lifted her chin and started making all those little adaptations that we didn’t think her capable of making. She started putting more weight behind her second serve, taking a few more risks with her groundstrokes, and even changing the pace of the ball every now and then. The baseline rallies didn’t look unfairly tilted in Serena’s favor any longer, and the American seemed so gobsmacked by the momentum shift that she started making untimely double faults. Yes, you heard that right: the greatest server in the history of women’s tennis was so rattled by Azarenka’s sudden surge that she couldn’t protect her serve. Nerves from Serena, or just Azarenka’s improved play? As boring as this may sound, it was a bit of both.

Serena had entered the final of the US Open last year with not a single soul on the planet expecting her to lose, but Samantha Stosur came out playing such a stellar game that the match was over before Serena even realized what was happening. A year later, the effects of that stunning match still lingered. Serena looked decidedly shaky after she lost her serve early in the second set yesterday; apparently, she felt that if she relinquished control of the match even for a moment, she’d end up losing another US Open final. She started going for too much, too early, specially on the return, and littered errors all over the court in the process. Astutely recognizing the change in the dynamic of the match, Azarenka decided to showcase to the world that she hadn’t reached the top ranking by accident. She made Serena pay for her errors, and her confidence grew to such an extent that by the end of the second set, she was returning even the hardest-hit bullets coming from the other side of the net with interest. The American commentators, who were blatantly pro-Serena right from the start, struggled to find words to explain why the match had taken such a dramatic U-turn.

The third set started in similar vein as the second, with Azarenka pressuring Serena’s serve and getting a bunch of free points in her own service games (mostly through errors from Serena). But Serena hadn’t shown us the whole gamut of the weapons she had in her arsenal just yet; maybe she was just waiting for the right moment? Out came her ferocious competitive spirit, and she refused to lie down and let Azarenka run away with the match. She came back from a break down twice – the first time with Azarenka serving at 2-1, and the second, and decisive time, with Azarenka serving for the championship at 5-4. She had some help from Azarenka, specially in that 5-4 game where the Belarussian’s nerves made her send routine groundstrokes long or into the net, but there was no mistaking Serena’s role in the comeback. She amped up the power in her play at exactly the right times, and seemed to will the ball to land exactly where she wanted on the biggest points. She wanted this, perhaps more than any person has ever wanted anything. And since this is Serena we’re talking about, how could it end any other way than with the trophy falling into her lap?

Credit Azarenka, playing perhaps the best tennis of her life (even if the stats sheet doesn’t say so), for not giving the match away to Serena. The records may show that Azarenka made 28 unforced errors against only 13 winners, but if you saw the way Serena was chasing nearly everything down, belting winners from the most defensive of court positions, you’d know that Azarenka’s winner count simply doesn’t indicate how well she was playing. The World No. 1 stared down the two fiercest fighters on tour in back-to-back matches, and if nothing else, this performance should at least help her hold off the critics questioning her right to the top spot. That said, the outstanding take-away from this match is that Serena, playing far below her best, was still able to defeat an opponent playing out of her mind.

When Azarenka and Maria Sharapova were slugging it out in the semifinals, one of the commentators had said, “There’s a lot at stake here: the chance to win a second Grand Slam in the year!” I remember thinking at that time: ‘Are you freaking kidding me? What’s at stake here is merely a chance to get whipped by Serena in the final!’ No, Azarenka didn’t get whipped by Serena in the final. But what the final showed is that when Serena is playing at her best, like she was in that first set, she’s so far ahead of the competition that it’s not even funny. Serve, return, forehand, backhand, movement – she does everything better than any other woman on tour. Every single thing. Add in the legendary mental toughness, and you can see how and why she can turn the WTA into such a complete mockery whenever she’s in the mood for it. We may not realize it now, but what we’re witnessing through Serena’s career is truly unparalleled; it is something that we’ll be telling stories to our grandchildren about.

These last three months have been all Serena. The Wimbledon title, the Olympics gold, and now this US Open victory – she has been on an absolute rampage, and has left a slew of punch-drunk opponents in her wake. 15 Slam titles, 4 US Open trophies, third woman to win the Wimbledon-Olympics-US Open triple; we all know the numbers. The thing that we may not have known (or at least the thing that we may not have been sure of) is where Serena ranks among the most dominant players in history. Let us see: does being dominant mean that you defeat, nay, crush, the very best players of your generation on a regular basis? Does it mean that you possess weapons that are so far out of reach of your competition that it looks unfair to even start a comparison? Does it mean that when you play at your best, there’s not a single player who can come anywhere close to defeating you? Or does it mean that no matter how dire the situation, you find a way to pull out the win almost every single time?

I can think of only one player who fulfills all of those conditions, and that player’s name is not Roger Federer.