Serena Williams has moved level with Roger Federer, on 17 grand slams apiece, after her 7-5, 6-7, 6-1 victory over Victoria Azarenka on Arthur Ashe Stadium on Sunday night...
You could make a strong case that the two GOATs – or “greatest of all time” – are now bracketed together.
This was the second successive year that these two had met in the US Open final, and the second year they had served up a classic. We should give some credit to Azarenka, who did everything she could think of to halt the Williams supertanker, yet was simply overpowered in the end.
During the early stages, Azarenka had a little help from the elements. The wind around the borough of Queen’s did not seem all that strong. Inside the stadium, though, it was swirling viciously and hitching the players’ skirts up above their waists.
This is not supposed to be a salacious point (both women had respectable Lycra shorts on underneath) but a genuine tennis issue.
Williams had opted for a flowing dress with so much movement in the fabric that she kept having to stop and smooth it down as she prepared to serve.
The interruptions were a distraction, contributing to a tally of five double-faults from the most reliable server on the tour.
After a rollicking opening game in which she struck the ball with purpose and enormous power to break Azarenka’s serve, Williams went into one of those mental funks that sometimes bedevil her in pressure situations.
“I can’t play in this wind” she wailed, during a 20-minute spell where she could barely locate the court.
Yet something has changed since she hit a low point against Virginie Razzano at last year’s French Open, with her one and only first-round loss in a grand slam. In the aftermath of that defeat, she started a working – and personal – relationship with the French coach Patrick Mouratoglou.
He has helped her learn to relax on the court, to be a little less judgmental and doomy when things are going against her. "She is mutating," Mouratoglou told USA Today last week. "If you look at how she was playing when she was 20 and now, it's a completely different player.”
Tactically, the shift has been to introduce more shades of grey to what was once a black-and-white game: either Williams hit a winner or she missed the court.
That may partly have been because she has not always been the best-conditioned woman on the tour. Relying on her outrageous talent, she would go into tournaments a little underprepared, and thus feel that she had to keep the rallies short.
Now, though, she has learned that she sometimes needs to defend as well as go for the early winner. Trusting in her fitness, she can throttle back on her game, as she did yesterday when her error count became dangerously high. This is a woman whose breaking point is increasingly difficult to find.
The critical moment of the first set came when Williams served at 4-5, deuce. Azarenka stood two points away from the set, and then came the twist: Williams hit a 121mph ace that was ruled out because of a foot-fault call.
We all remember what happened at the US Open final in 2009, when Williams was foot-faulted and responded by threatening to shove the ball down the official’s throat. This time, though, she simply steeled herself and took the point anyway with a sweet backhand winner.
Williams has only looked vulnerable in this tournament when closing out matches. She needed six match points to eject Li Na in the semi-final, and twice wasted her chance yesterday when serving for a straight-sets win. Never mind: the third set turned into a procession. This lady was not for turning.
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