By Bill Simons
Richard Williams had an outrageous dream—to raise and train not one but two daughters who would dominate tennis.
Incredibly, perhaps the most audacious dream in sports history came true. Venus and Serena Williams revolutionized the game. Intimidating forces like no other, they collected titles at will. Grand Slams or the Olympics, hard courts or grass, it didn’t seem to matter. Here at Roland Garros, on clay, surely the dream would continue. Serena was coming off an impressive win in Rome and was the defending champion in a land she’s grown to love. She has a Parisian apartment, a French boyfriend and coach, and she has grown to relish playing on clay. Fans anticipated many a dreamy matchup in Paris. Serena would face Venus in a sizzling third-round sister showdown, with the winner likely going on to a juicy quarterfinal against Maria Sharapova.
But how quickly our dreams are tattered.
Venus did easily dispatch the lean Slovakian Anna Schmiedlova, ranked No. 56, in the first set of their second-round match. Yet despite her February win in Doha, Vee’s conditioning and fire are still in doubt. She remains elegant and regal, but her career is in a kind of twilight zone. Soon it was clear that the old warrior could not keep up with the 19-year old, whose convincing 2-6, 6-3, 6-4 win put an end to any sister showdown.
No worries. As she so often has before, the oh-so-loyal younger Williams would grab the baton and fly high the family flag. On a cold windy day on Court Suzanne Lenglen, Serena was in place to dismiss another young player immersed in uncertainty. Even Garbine Muguruza herself wasn’t sure if she was Spanish, like her Dad, or Venezuelan like her mom. And scouts were unsure of her future. She did win the Hobart hard-court tourney in January, but was only ranked No. 35 and had only one high-quality recent win (at the Aussie Open, where she beat Caroline Wozniacki, then ranked No. 10).
Insiders knew the 20-year old had idolized Serena as a kid. She had watched hundreds of videos of her, and modeled her serve and backhand after the great champion.
But on this day, the champion was not great. She was sluggish, off-balance, and lacking fire. Or as Gertrude Stein—another American who loved Paris—once famously said, there was no there there.
For all her success, for all her devastating shots, and for all the votes she garners as the best of all time, Serena still remains an enigma. Up, down, playing well, faltering badly—drama follows this athlete like a relentless groupie. She owns the US Open, then implodes there. She misses the French Open in 2011, suffers a monstrous first-round upset in 2012, and then storms back to take the title with ease a year later. Federerian consistency is not her thing.
The most popular pysch-theory swirling in the considerable Parisian winds was that Williams needs a fierce challenge—intense and in her gut. She played her best ball after being jilted by a linebacker. Think: “I’ll show him.” She was a demon here last year after being humbled in the first round in 2012. More recently, after Charleston, Serena seemed adrift, a tired trooper who spoke of battle fatigue. In Paris, she seemed to have more sparkle when she spoke of schmoozing at Kim Kardashian’s French wedding than when she was discussing her tennis goals.
What goals?
Here, the intensely emotional Williams was merely seeking shadows: her 18th major, to tie Chrissie and Martina, and her third Roland Garros. Been there, done that. Rather, Serena is driven by blood and passion, not paper and stats. But great champions are supposed to step up on off days. Instead, Serena withered quite meekly, as Muguruza pounded power groundies directly at her feet, denying her the angles she loves to use to create winners.
Serena had lost just one clay court match in the last two years, and she is known for her Houdini-like ability to escape defeat. (Just ask Li Na.) Surely, she would warm up and put the 20-year-old in her place. Yet Muguruza—poised and up to her task—kept hammering away, as Serena’s backhands flew wild. Serena netted the simplest of overheads, her serve was surprisingly weak, and winners from her racket seemed like endangered species. We watched and waited for the great champion to play a huge point, scream “C’mon” at the top of her lungs to the horror of 8,000 proper French fans, and mount one of her patented counter-offenses.
It didn’t happen. And young Muguruza didn’t blink. “I was nervous,” she recalled. “But I said, ‘Okay, be calm. She’s also nervous.'” Serena also seemed lost. She slapped her thighs, snapped at a ball boy, pleaded to the heavens, and rolled her eyes.
Down 2-6, 0-3, Serena did break the Spaniard’s serve. But she immediately played a wretched game, allowing Muguruza to break back to 1-4.
While Maria Sharapova’s camp pulled for Muguruza, and giddy children ran wild and free about the grounds on kids day, a sense of doom descended on the Williams friends box and in the American sector of the press room. Would Venus and Serena lose on the same day for the first time since the 2011 Wimbledon? Would the French Open—which already had seen the departure of No. 3 men’s seed Stan Wawrinka and No. 2 women’s seed Li Na—now have to endure the loss of its No. 1-seeded and most charismatic woman? “Would we,” asked one sarcastic tweeter, “actually get the Muguruza-Schmiedlova showdown we all wanted?”
When Serena promptly lost 6-2, 6-2, observers claimed the match wasn’t as close as the score. The stats sheets revealed that Serena hit just eight winners against 29 unforced errors , winning only 27 percent of her second-serve points. Historians noted it was the worst Grand Slam scoreline in Serena’s 16-year career, and exasperated veteran broadcaster David Mercer simply asked, “What on earth is going to happen next?”
“I don’t think anything worked for me today,” Serena said. “I just can’t serve … It was one of those days. You can’t be on every day.” Then she got intense, saying, “It’s great, because I’m going to go home and work five times as hard to make sure I never lose again.”
When Serena was asked “Are you angry with yourself or disappointed?” she switched from sarcasm to being reflective: “No, I’m really happy with myself. I feel great … [Obviously] I’m super disappointed and … [I] know for a fact I can play so much better. … I just feel like I don’t have to win another match, I don’t have to win another tournament. Everything and every day is a bonus for me … But, it’s great sometimes to get knocked down, because you have to get back up. I love getting back up. I love the challenge.” She added, “My first few months [this year] I don’t think have been great at all. I haven’t gotten past the fourth round of a Grand Slam. I have a couple of words to describe it, but that would be really inappropriate.”
Inappropriate? Well, so far this French Open tennis tournament been more than inappropriate. Just ask Lady Venus, Stan the Man, Madame Na, or Ms. Serena.
