Serena Williams wins sixth U.S. Open
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Version 0 of 1. NEW YORK — There was no shot her opponent could muster Sunday that left Serena Williams without at least an option for an answer, even if, once in a great while, the best option was to let it go and focus on the next point. There was almost no serve she couldn’t at least get back over the net, no corner of the court where she could be pinned, no shot she played — even those that missed their mark — that didn’t at least have a purpose. The effect was of a woman — a great champion, an unstoppable force, playing a different game than anyone else in the world — whose only true opponent was herself. Williams, in the final of the U.S. Open, seemed as if she could beat Caroline Wozniacki by whatever score she chose. As it was, she chose 6-3, 6-3. Perhaps she pulled the numbers out of a hat. The history of the moment — a record-tying sixth U.S. Open and an 18th Grand Slam title — overwhelmed Williams at the end. As Wozniacki’s final shot sailed long, Williams dropped her racket and fell flat on her back beyond the baseline, arms outstretched. She put her hands to her face and sobbed, finally getting to her feet in time to greet Wozniacki, a close friend, who had sauntered to Williams’s side of the net to congratulate her. “It was really a wonderful feeling,” Williams said a few moments later. “I’m really emotional. I couldn’t ask to do it at a better place.” Afterward, on the court, legends Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova — each the owner of 18 Grand Slam titles themselves, fourth all-time among women — descended upon Williams to welcome her into their rarified midst. There were hugs and photos, and they flanked her for the trophy presentation, perhaps awed by the notion, unfathomable during their own day, that Williams’s victory was worth a record $4 million. Evert won her last Grand Slam title at 31, Navratilova at 33. No woman has ever won one beyond her 34th birthday. Williams turns 33 at the end of this month, but based on what a packed house of 22,712 at Arthur Ashe Stadium witnessed on Sunday, her days of hoisting trophies and blowing teary kisses to the crowd are far from behind her. Perhaps there was some question about Williams following her showings in the year’s first three majors — all of them featuring uncharacteristic flame-outs in the fourth round or earlier. At Wimbledon, the final and lasting image of her was the bizarre, woozy withdrawal from her doubles match after double-faulting four times — an episode tournament directors chalked up to a viral infection. But whatever questions remained about Williams were put to rest on Sunday, when she destroyed Wozniacki, a talented shot-maker and formidable counter-puncher from Denmark who entered the tournament ranked 11th in the world and playing, by all accounts, the best tennis of her life. Some of the statistics from the match almost defy belief, none more so than the fact Williams hit 29 winners compared to a mere four for Wozniacki. When Wozniacki hit a groundstroke past Williams, a cross-court backhand in the final game of the match, Williams tapped her racket with her open hand, in the universal tennis gesture of applause. Usually, it denotes respect. Here, it almost looked like pity. Seven of Wozniacki’s nine service games featured at least one break point, and Williams broke her a total of five times. The only reason the score wasn’t more lopsided was that Williams managed to get only 53 percent of her first serves in, and committed a total of 23 unforced errors. “When she’s on her game, it’s not fun to play her,” Wozniacki said. “I had a game plan in mind, but it was kind of difficult from the start. I tried to push her back, but that really didn’t work for me.” Wozniacki, playing in her first Grand Slam final since the 2009 U.S. Open, wasn’t alone in getting steamrolled by Williams these past two weeks. Williams won all 14 sets she played, never dropping more than three games in any of them. This being her third straight U.S. Open title — the first to win three straight since Evert in the 1970s — she now has a 21-match winning streak in Flushing Meadows. She has been winning championships on these courts for a decade and a half now, her first coming in 1999 at 17. She may not have another 15 years of title-winning in her, but she has plenty left. Some in the women’s game may have looked at Williams’s early exits at Melbourne, Roland Garros and Wimbledon this year and concluded Williams’s age was catching up to her. It now appears that was merely wishful thinking. |