A Perfectionist's Storm

To wind up 2014, I’m reposting 14 articles I liked from this past season. I’ll put up one each day until January 5, when the new season begins. Today, my report on the day Serena Williams joined the 18-major club.

NEW YORK—Sometimes it pays to be a perfectionist.

In her quarterfinal match at the U.S. Open, against Flavia Pennetta, Serena Williams got off to a very slow start, losing the first three games. She was determined not to let it happen again in her next round, and she didn’t; two days later she jumped all over Ekaterina Makarova in the semifinals and never let up. Yet even in that immaculate performance, Serena found a blemish. Her serve wasn’t up to snuff. Which, in a way, was OK; it gave her something to improve in the final.

“It’s good news,” Serena said after beating Makarova, “knowing I could try to serve better for one more match.”

Going strictly by the statistics, it’s hard to say Serena improved that shot against Caroline Wozniacki in the final. Williams made just 53 percent of first serves, was broken twice, and threw in some shaky double faults in the first set. But the stats don’t tell the story of how much Serena’s biggest shot meant to her coming down the stretch on Sunday. Knowing she had a chance to win her 18th Grand Slam and tie Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova on the all-time list, Serena was tight. On some shots, and in the early going especially, you could almost feel her nerves in Arthur Ashe Stadium. It was her serve, which grew stronger with every game, that steadied her and kept her moving toward the finish line, which she crossed in 75 minutes, 6-3, 6-3.

For example:

—At 5-2 in the first, Serena let a set point on Wozniacki’s serve slip past with a nervous return of serve. No matter: In the next game, she belted two service winners and held.

—After breaking to open the second set, she started with a 120-M.P.H. service winner, and held at love with an ace.

—At 3-2, she hit three aces and a service winner to hold.

—At 4-3, she hit a 116-M.P.H. service winner to hold.

As Wozniacki said, after being asked to talk about what makes Serena unique, “When she needs to, she can pull out that big serve. She has the power. She can push us back on the court and take the initiative.”

Serena needed all of those big serves today, because she wasn’t in the same kind of groove as she had been in the semifinals. She rushed between points, gave back two early breaks, and admitted later that the tennis was pretty sketchy to start.

Obviously a major final imposes a different kind of pressure than a semifinal. But it was a little surprising to hear how much Serena was laboring, and had labored, under the burden of getting to her 18th Slam title. She typically downplays numbers, like her ranking or her major-title goals, but it’s clear they matter to her. It’s also clear she knew exactly who she was chasing down.

“It was definitely on my shoulders,” she said of getting to 18. “It was definitely like, ‘Oh, get there, get there, get there.’ Now I’ve gotten there, so now it’s a little bit of a relief.”

“It means a lot to me,” she continued. “You know, I just could never have imagined that I would be mentioned with Chris Evert or with Martina Navratilova, because I was just a kid with a dream and a racquet. Living in Compton, you know, this never happened before.”

On the other side of the net, Wozniacki admitted that she had trouble settling down against Serena, and in front of the Ashe crowd.

“I was a little nervous going out there,” she said. “When you walk into the stadium and people are screaming so loud you can’t hear what you’re thinking yourself, it’s kind of overwhelming.”

Wozniacki never found her range, and finished with just four winners against 15 unforced errors. She couldn’t time Serena’s serve, and when she managed to get on neutral terms in rallies, she made mistakes.

“I knew that against Serena,” she said, “you have to have a good start, otherwise she starts going in and being even more aggressive. You know, you’re kind of done. So, you know, I didn’t get the start I wanted. Then all of a sudden I see myself going behind and it’s tough to get back.”

Yet even when she could see the writing on the wall, and feel the weight of Serena’s shots, Wozniacki never stopped running—giving in isn’t her style. In the last few games, she ran longer and farther than she had all match in pursuit of Serena’s line-hugging ground strokes. The best of her scrambles came in the final game, when she tracked down so many balls that the crowd began to laugh. It looked like a drill in which one player, in this case Serena, stands in the center of the court and runs the other player back and forth until she drops. Wozniacki didn’t drop, but she did lose that 26-shot rally. It inspired the biggest cheer of the night from the audience, and the fiercest-looking first-pump from Serena. Wozniacki had won the city’s heart at this tournament, and she won them again in defeat.

“I had a great two weeks here,” said Wozniacki, 24, who put a cap on her summer resurgence at Flushing Meadows and vaulted herself back into the Top 10. “I’ve had a great summer. I’ve won so many matches. And Serena stopped me three times. But I feel like I’m on the right path.”

“I know Caroline,” said Serena, who said she planned to buy a drink or three for both of them Sunday night. “She did so well and she was fighting so hard. That’s one thing I love about her and love about her game.”

As for her own game, Serena the self-described perfectionist was as close to perfect over these two weeks as she’s ever been at a major. While she didn’t face any of the other Top 10 seeds, and she wasn’t pushed in the final the way she was by Victoria Azarenka in 2012 and 2013, Serena didn’t drop more than three games in any of the 14 sets she played. After suffering early blow-ups at the other three majors this year, she seemed determined to make everything as routine as possible here. When something was off in one match, she made sure she corrected it in the next one.

The win drew her even in the history books with Evert and Navratilova. Serena, near tears afterward, said it was a special pleasure to get her 18th back on the court where she won her first, at age 17, in 1999. For the third straight year, she sang along to Prince’s “1999” as she paraded, posed, mugged, and leapt for joy with the trophy. "Parties weren't meant to last," Prince sings, but Serena's certainly has.

It was a happy ending to a sometimes unhappy season for Williams, as she reached her magic Slam number at last. But was it enough?

“I’m already looking at 19,” she said, before crossing her eyes at her own unrelenting drive. “Hasn’t even been three hours and I’m already...”

Sometimes it’s hard being a perfectionist.