Exactly the thought of the other women on tour. The following month Williams, aching but no longer ill, danced through the raindrops at Wimbledon, surmounting a two-break third-set hole against Heather Watson in the third round (“I was on my way out,” Williams says), dodging Azarenka over three sets in the quarters and bludgeoning Maria Sharapova, soon to be the No. 2 player in the world, in the semis and rising star Garbiñe Muguruza in the final. For the second time in her career, Williams had won four straight majors over two seasons: the Serena Slam. Now the oldest woman in the Open era to win a major singles title, she was ranging the tennis landscape like some sci-fi force cooked up by James Cameron and Nick Bollettieri: wounded, hunted yet adapting to every new adversary.
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All year Williams kept coming, on a path more arduous than anyone knew, and she put together the best season by a woman in a quarter century. “I do want to be known as the greatest ever,” she says. To many she already is. But that’s not the sole reason why we arrive, now, at this honor. It’s also because Williams kept pushing herself to grow, to be better, and tennis was the least of it. The trying is what’s impressive. The trying is why we are here.
No one suggests that Serena has evolved into the sport’s ambassador of peace and quiet. Her fans love her combustible displays as much as her detractors loathe them, and between Williams’s spray of f-bombs in the 2015 French Open final and her screaming, “Yes, bitch! Yes!” after blasting a winner during this year’s U.S. Open semis, both camps can rest assured that her core remains molten. “I’ve seen some growth,” her mother says, laughing. “I’ve seen some maturity . . . maybe 10% more.”
For those who think that’s hardly enough to justify an award that for 60 years has emphasized an athlete’s “manner,” consider the fact that profanity never disqualified a male candidate (cough, Tiger Woods), that microphone technology has improved greatly over the decades and that the only safe pick might be a champion like American Pharoah (page 144), who may well be cursing in a language you don’t know. Besides, taken in the long continuum of tennis bratitude, 10% is no small amount. Since joining forces with coach Patrick Mouratoglou in June 2012, Williams has been calmer, more circumspect with officials and more gracious to her opponents. And, this year, she brushed aside justifiable rage and fear of public humiliation—not to mention a point of family honor—to address the darkest chapter of her career.
That was the second sign of a new Serena Williams. Four days after winning Australia she announced in Time that she would return to Indian Wells, a premier tour stop in California where, in 2001, unfounded rumors of a Williams family match fix sparked unprecedented ugliness. When Venus Williams, who had pulled out of her semifinal against Serena with a knee injury, appeared in the stadium with her father, Richard, for the final between her younger sister and Kim Clijsters, vicious booing ensued. Richard later claimed that he heard racial slurs, and TV cameras showed him shaking his fist at the crowd.
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“It’s been huge,” Stevenson says. “It’s so rare when athletes at the top of their game are willing to embrace a set of issues that, for a lot of people, are edgier. This is not aid to orphans. These are questions of racial bias and discrimination, mass incarceration, excessive punishment, abuse of the mentally ill. You don’t change the world by doing what’s comfortable or convenient. You have to be willing to do uncomfortable things. In a small way, Serena’s return to Indian Wells represented that. But associating herself with an organization like ours was more significant: She was standing when a lot of her contemporaries remain seated, speaking up when others are being quiet. That’s an act of hope and an act of courage, but it’s also an act of change.”
Still, by the time Indian Wells rolled around last March, Williams wasn’t feeling all that brave. Two days before her opening match, against Monica Niculescu, she had a panic attack in the bedroom of her L.A. home. I do not want to go there, Serena thought. What if it’s horrible? What if they boo again? How can I get out of this?
Isha now was all for her pulling out. “I was one of those saying, ‘You don’t know what the people are going to do; I don’t want you exposed, I don’t want to see you hurt again,’” she recalls.
But Serena pulled herself together. Venus and Richard stayed home in Florida, but Serena, accompanied by Isha, their sister Lyndrea and Oracene, drove to Indian Wells the following day. Serena was too nervous to practice there before play began and even more jittery on the golf-cart ride to the court for the Friday night opener. “A very, very scary time,” she says, “but it wasn’t about me at that point.”
She had nothing to worry about. Williams walked out to a standing ovation that lasted into her warmups. At first Oracene was wary, wondering, Why are they being so nice? But Serena’s turn to conciliation made her mother take stock. “She needed that, and I learned that I need a bit of that, too,” Oracene says. Isha started crying. When Serena pulled off her headphones before the warmup and heard the cheers, she cried too.
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In early September, Williams suffered one of the biggest upsets in tennis history, losing her U.S. Open semifinal to 43rd-ranked journeywoman Roberta Vinci 2–6, 6–4, 6–4. The Grand Slam quest was dead, just when it had seemed assured: Flavia Pennetta, who like Vinci had never beaten Williams, was waiting in the final. Tennis fans, not to mention those who like tidy narratives, felt cheated. Right knee trouble in Indian Wells had forced Williams to withdraw before the semis, derailing a cathartic title run, and now history laughed at her in Flushing Meadow. Her season had everything but closure.
“I didn’t want to necessarily put a fist through a wall—I felt more like, Ah, man, I was so close!” Williams says. “I’ll always think about what I could have done better. Could I have come up on the net? Been more consistent? It’s not anger. It’s analyzing: What can I do next time?”
Yes, she admits now, the pressure got to her. But after the initial shock Williams was less devastated than exhausted. Hadn’t she won three majors? Her second Serena Slam? Meanwhile her knees and elbow were aching, bad, and the adrenaline drop had left her hollowed. So, after one day of irritation, she lost herself in promoting her fashion line for HSN at New York’s Fashion Week, then shut down her season. She didn’t touch a racket for a month. When the WTA Tour moved on to Beijing in early October, though, Williams felt something stir. In the middle of the month she put in one hard practice and sent out word on Snapchat: “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is I dreamed about tennis last night. The bad news is everybody better watch out.”
