At the very end, about to lose the last six games of the match, what she says is her last match at the U.S. Open or anywhere else, Serena Williams tried to be young one last time at Arthur Ashe Stadium. It had come down to this, three hours into her match against a younger woman named Ajla Tomljanovic: One of the great tennis players this country has ever produced, one of the great American stories in any sport, was trying to fight off one more match point, get just one more game.
She was trying to make this the kind of moment Jimmy Connors had in 1991, when he came out of nowhere to make it to the semis at the Open at which he turned 39. In the second week that year, as he had once again forgotten what year it was and was rocking old Louis Armstrong Stadium again, his friend Ilie Nastase watched and listened and said, “Jimmy has what we all want: One more time.”
Only now Serena, on a night when she had sprayed forehands all over Ashe and sometimes all the way across Roosevelt Ave. to the Mets game at Citi Field, was out of time, about to bury one more tired forehand into the net. So Serena would not get the Super Bowl that Tom Brady got when he was 43. She would not get one more green jacket, the way Tiger Woods did when he was 43 himself, or the one Jack Nicklaus got when he was 46.
“It was a fun ride,” she would say to the crowd at Ashe when it was over, another Open crowd trying to lift her and carry her across the finish line, giving her the most love she had gotten back from tennis, here or anywhere else.
But the crowd couldn’t make the kid who had come out of Compton, Calif., continue to write the ending for herself that would have made this, a week down the road, maybe in one more Open final, the biggest moment in American tennis history. It couldn’t make her young. She couldn’t make herself young, in the longest match she’d ever played at the Open, one she needed to have shortened when she should have put the second set away earlier than she did.
She would talk on the court about how she was trying to play herself into the tournament and how “I wish I should have started sooner.” But she hadn’t. Or couldn’t. She was 40, about to turn 41 in a couple of weeks. She hadn’t played enough tennis over the past couple of years. The irony was that maybe this week she had played too much because of a tough doubles match on this same court with her sister Venus the night before, their own shared farewell.
The match with Tomljanovic was described as thrilling. In patches it was, certainly in that last game. The scoreboard still said Serena had lost 6-1 in the third. Then it was over against Tomljanovic, who would be as graceful and immensely poised talking to the crowd herself as she had been as she’d won the match of her life, everything that had begun for Serena and Venus back in the 1990s, appropriately enough in the major championship built in a public park in Queens, N.Y.
Tomljanovic talked about how Serena had taught her to “dream big.” Serena had always done that, coming from where she’d come from and ultimately winning more major championships in singles than any American player, man or woman, had ever won, 23 of them trying to be 24 at this Open.
She had the biggest serve and the biggest game and a personality to match. Sometimes she had shouted over it all, obscuring her own greatness in the process. She once threatened to shove a tennis ball down the throat of an Open lineswoman who had called a foot fault on her, and got defaulted out of an Open semi on match point. Serena did so much to ruin Naomi Osaka’s victory over her — Osaka’s moment — in the ’18 Open when she got into an argument with the chair umpire.
So in addition to her own power and genius, she had some Connors in her, too, and some McEnroe. In the modern world of tennis, that was American, too.
She was trying to get to major No. 24 that day against Osaka, tie Margaret Court for the most singles majors any woman had ever won. She would try again a year later, on this court, against Bianca Andreescu, before losing in straight sets again. She was not young enough — not Serena enough — that day, either. At least she had made one more Open final at the time. This time she couldn’t make it to the fourth round, even though she had once more made American tennis all about her. Her last three losses at the Open, against Osaka, against Andreescu, now against Tomljanovic, came against women in their 20s.
Maybe she’ll come back again. She keeps leaving the door open and did Friday night when it was over. Brady came out of retirement not long ago. Tiger keeps trying to come back from a terrible automobile accident. You wonder what Tiger was thinking in the stands at Ashe Stadium this week, watching Serena try to have one more time, and making the first week of the Open into a time.
In the end, she and her sister combined for 30 major titles in singles, because it gets lost sometimes that Venus won a couple of Opens and five Wimbledons. They lifted up women’s tennis, they inspired young players, especially young players of color. It was a fitting thing on this Friday that in the late afternoon, at the end of this week that had so much about the past, there was Coco Gauff, African-American teenager, putting on a dazzling display against Madison Keys, another African-American. Who had once lost a U.S. Open final to yet another African-American player, Sloane Stephens. It is why it is impossible, if this is goodbye for her, to measure her impact and her older sister’s just in terms of the numbers.
Theirs hasn’t just been a remarkable tennis story. It has been a remarkable American story. Serena came back this week for one more Open, and was as big a star, maybe bigger, than she had ever been.
There is always the drama, every year at the Open, this time of year in New York, about the looming end of summer. This was a different kind of ending for Serena late Friday night, a quarter-century after she first heard the cheers at the US Open. Just never cheers like this. It’s why she perhaps tricked herself into believing, in this last, loud moment of hers, that she’d won one last title, even though she hadn’t.
THESE DISAPPOINTING YANKS, BRADY A REALITY TV STAR, LINDOR THE WHOLE PACKAGE & BRING BACK LASSO!
It is worth mentioning again that if this Yankee freefall continues into October, they are looking at an ending that will be the most disappointing since 2004.
You really have to wonder who the Yankees beat in the postseason, even if they hang on in the American League East — which they should, considering the schedule the Rays have the rest of the way — with a one-man offense.
Even if the one man is No. 99.
Speaking of sluggers, this is a perfect time, to paraphrase the great George Young, for the $300 million man they do have, Mr. Stanton, to start $300-million-ing.
Right?
Tom Brady has apparently started his television career already.
Just in a reality series.
Starring himself.
You know what are going to be the only postseason games the Red Sox play this season?
The regular season games they have left against the Yankees.
All because of that crackerjack job of general managing Chaim Bloom did in Boston.
Bloom seemed to be under the impression that he could compete in the AL East with no power, no first baseman and no bullpen.
As far as I can tell, basketball New York is about to bravely carry on without Donovan Mitchell.
The guy we couldn’t live without.
Until it turns out we could.
Old Timers’ Day at Citi Field — you remember Old Timers’ Day, right, Yankee fans — was an absolute blast.
How long before we hear that Kyrie Irving is going to stay in his room until he gets traded?
Before long the college football season, at least for teams making the new tournament, is going to have more games than the NFL season.
For all those student athletes.
I know how easy it is to root against the Lakers, but pro basketball sure is a lot more interesting when they’re in play.
At least in Cameron Smith, the Blood Money Tour has a golfer who’s best days might actually be ahead of him.
Of course, Aaron Judge is the most fun player in town to watch hit this season.
But Francisco Lindor is the one who’s most fun to watch play.
That means the whole package:
Hitting, fielding, running the bases.
He really does have Mookie Betts’ skill set.
When you’re willing to spend big on stars, the way Steve Cohen is willing to spend big, you end up with guys like Lindor, and guys like Max Scherzer.
OK, when’s “Ted Lasso” coming back?
If you are on the grounds of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center this week, take a moment to walk over to the Bud Collins U.S. Open Media Center, named that in honor of a sportswriter and TV commentator who tried to teach a whole country about tennis.
One more thing on Jimmy Connors:
He turned 70 on Friday.
Wait….what?
Isn’t he supposed to be coming back from 2-5 down at Armstrong Stadium against Aaron Krickstein still, on his birthday in ’91?
* * *
Mike Lupica’s new Jesse Stone novel, “Robert B. Parker’s Fallout,” goes on sale Tuesday. He’ll be discussing it that morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
