“I feel like if I can do the “Serena Slam”, I will be OK heading into the Grand Slam“, said Williams.
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“Plus she didn’t say, Game, set, match really loud, so I wasn’t sure if there was some type of call or something”.
On Saturday evening, hours after admiring the gold letters of her name on the board in a hallway of the Centre Court building listing Wimbledon’s champions, Williams sat with a small group of reporters for one final interview.
Thanks to an uncharacteristic three double faults, she broke Williams’s serve in the first game, leaving the American suddenly looking her age.
The world No1 launched an attacking barrage, breaking twice in the first set, which she clinched in 33 minutes with a scorching backhand victor.
Spokesman John Hill said: “It would take a courageous person to bet against Serena completing the calendar Grand Slam this year as her form has just been head and shoulders above anyone in women’s tennis at the moment”.
If the American triumphs at the U.S. Open – and the odds might be stacked in her favor given the 33-year-old is the three-time defending champion – she would become the first player since Steffi Graf in 1988 to complete the calendar-year grand slam. “I honestly wouldn’t have thought previous year after winning the US Open I would win the Serena Slam at all”, she said.
“She’s such a great player”. She has now won eight major championships since turning 30. The ace with which she began it was testament to that – although her rhythm was still off at times, leading to a few embarrassing double faults. “… To me, she could arguably be the greatest athlete of the last 100 years”. “She never gave up hope of raising the trophy”. The next game Serena Williams takes the easy wins and win the Wimbeldon title. The sort of tennis she is playing this year and for the last many, many years has left no one in doubt that she is unbeatable when she is fit and in the right state of the mind.
It still seemed only a mild inconvenience for Williams as she stepped up to serve for the match for a second time. Soon enough, though, Williams was telling a teary-eyed Muguruza: “Don’t be sad, you’ll be holding this trophy very, very soon, believe me”.
However, Williams had recovered from worse predicaments earlier in the tournament and with the pressure ratcheted up, the inevitable break back arrived in the eighth game when Muguruza missed with a wild forehand.
“I did the whole presentation, I did the whole walk around the court; I was peaceful, feeling really good”.
Suddenly, Williams was up a set and 5-1 in the second.
But an angst-ridden finale in which Muguruza tenaciously fought back showed that, despite Williams’s vast experience and vice-like grip on women’s tennis, crossing the finishing line for a 21st grand slam title made her heart pound just as fast as when she made her first breakthrough at the 1999 U.S. Open.
Muguruza received her second place prize as the audience gave her a standing ovation.
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“But I think it’s going to be an unbelievable match”. In that win at the French Open, Muguruza surprised Williams with her power and placement. Serena slammed her way past her sibling, with relative ease. And while the woman who had accumulated $69million in prize money over her illustrious career had started oddly nervously, the conditions underfoot at the opposite end of the court to the Royal Box apparently disturbing her rhythm, she remains someone physically and emotionally incapable of accepting defeat.
