As Serena Williams stood one tie-break away from her demise in the second set of the breathless, unforgettable final match of her career, a deafening wall of noise inside Arthur Ashe Stadium punctuated every minor victory she achieved.
She had led 5-3 in the first set, only for her lead to crumble. When she established a 5-2 advantage in the second set, her four set points evaporated in a flash. Each time she came close she was arrested by tension, rust, nerves.
Nothing went her way, but Williams did what she has done for 27 years: she fought. She tore into forehands, her loud, piercing grunts following every shot. She sprinted for every last ball, she pumped her fists and hollered at herself in encouragement. Somehow, she dragged herself over the line in the second-set tie-break, crunching a searing forehand winner off a 20-shot rally, one of her final moments of defiance.
It was not enough. Williams’s final win was to be two days earlier against the second seed, Anett Kontaveit, in the second round. But in the final three hours and five minutes she spent on court as a professional player, as she succumbed to Ajla Tomljanovic 7-5, 6-7(4), 6-1, every last second was spent desperately searching for a way through.
Tomljanovic, is a much improved Croatian-born Australian who has spent most of her career ranked between 38 and 80. There are no parallels to the noise, the spectacle and the drama that has marked every night of Williams’s Arthur Ashe residence, but Tomljanovic has had more experience with wildly partisan crowds than most after grinding Emma Raducanu into submission in the fourth round of Wimbledon last year.
But that was Court One at Wimbledon against a novice and this was a sold-out Arthur Ashe Stadium against the player she grew up admiring. From the beginning, though, she was ready. She started the match by thumping a forehand winner down the line off a Williams first serve, which set the tone for the supreme opposition she provided. She was a wall, soaking up the pace offered by Williams, deflecting everything down the middle with immaculate depth while attacking every short ball.
For large parts, Williams was even better. The contrast between the inconsistent Williams on opening night and early on Friday was stark. For much of the match she was sharp, moving her feet, attacking the ball freely, sweeping forward without a second of hesitation.
She had everything in her game to seal the victory and carry on this crazy ride, but in the most important moments her lack of match fitness and the weight of the occasion came back to her. She just could not find her nerve.
As she tried, the crowd gave standing ovations merely for successful breaks, they roared during and after points. They were the audience Williams deserved as she made her last stand.
Tomljanovic served for the match at 5-1 but it would not be. Each time she faced match point Williams rose up and eviscerated the ball, holding off retirement for a little longer. It was so typical. Five match points came and went, but Williams could only delay the inevitable.
For a few fleeting moments, when she was in full flow early on, it was hard not to imagine just how long she might extend this run. But there are no fairytales here. Instead, the final stage of Williams’s career has represented something far more meaningful.
She played on after so many believed her interests lay elsewhere. She has outlasted every single one of her contemporaries, aside from her sister, Venus, by more than a decade. She has won grand slam matches in her teens, 20s, 30s and 40s. There is no greater expression of her love for the sport than how long she stayed and many times she came back. She played on until the end, the very end.
After the match Williams cried as she thanked the people around her and saluted Venus, the other half of one of the greatest sports stories there will be. “I wouldn’t be Serena if there wasn’t Venus, so thank you, Venus,” she said.
Even as she departed, though, she couldn’t fully let go. Asked if she would ever reconsider her decision to retire, she wavered. “I don’t think so, but you never know.”
As she fought in those final moments, a memory that came to mind was one of the very first – 1998, when Williams arrived in Australia for her first full season aged 16. She was ranked 96th, playing in the third WTA main draw of her life.
As white and yellow beads threaded into her tidy braids, she trailed the great Lindsay Davenport 6-1, 5-2 in their quarter-final after coming through qualifying.
But Serena was not finished. Bit by bit, with bursts of athleticism and attack, she punctuated her victorious shots with clenched fists and cries of “Yes” as she overturned the deficit to win 1-6, 7-5, 7-5.
That was the first comeback of Williams’s career and in the 24 years since everything has changed yet nothing at all. She has gone from zero titles to 23 grand slams, she has spent 319 weeks at No 1 and conquered the world in singles and doubles. She has taken the game to a level no other woman has reached.
But the image she projected when she arrived is the same that she departs with: the grit, the passion, the glorious sight of Serena Williams in the heat of battle, fighting with everything she had.
