Comeback Artist

As Serena Williams walked through the tunnel and onto the stadium court at Indian Wells on Friday night, she wasn’t sure what she was going to hear. The last time she had been in this position at the BNP Paribas Open was in 2001, as a 19-year-old, and she had been blindsided by a wall of boos from an angry audience. The experience was traumatic enough to keep her away for 14 years.

This time Serena began with the crowd blocked out; as she entered, two headphones were pressed tightly against her ears. She said she had been anxious—something she doesn’t often admit to being—about this moment, and that she had even spent an extra day in Los Angeles before heading out to the desert to practice.

“To be honest,” Serena said on Thursday, “I was a little nervous to come out here. In the beginning I was like, ‘What was I thinking?’ I had to kind of overcome that hurdle.”

The final hurdle was confronting the crowd that had kept her away for so long. When her name was announced and the cheers began to swell, Serena took off her headphones. The standing ovation washed over her. A “Welcome back Serena” sign was hoisted in the upper deck. John McEnroe and tournament owner Larry Ellison stood to clap in the front row. By the time Serena had reached the sidelines, she was in tears.

“I think they were tears of just being overwhelmed,” she said later. “At that moment I just felt so good to be out there. I felt like I made the right decision and I knew I wanted to do it. But up until that moment, I didn’t really know if it was the right thing to do.”

After her entrance, Serena still had to get through a tough, tricky, sometimes not very pretty two-hour match against Monica Niculescu. The highly vocal Romanian played her part in the drama well. When her name was announced a few seconds before Serena’s, Niculescu walked out smiling widely. The world No. 68 doesn’t find herself in too many main stadiums, let alone in situations like this one. Niculescu, as both a player and an observer of the spectacle around her, was ready to savor the moment.

Grunting and squeaking with every swing, she did what she does best: disrupt. Her slice forehand is as hard to handle as it is unorthodox, and Serena, who had never faced her before, spent most of the match pulling up on the ball just to get it over the net. Williams, after wiping away the tears and composing herself, went down 0-2 to start. While she eventually escaped 7-5, 7-5, she was never allowed to settle into her natural game.

“Boy, she was interesting,” Serena said of Niculescu. “I just never got the same ball. I just wasn’t able to get my rhythm today. I’m just glad to get through that match. It was definitely a super-tricky one for me.”

In the end, after all of the build-up, Serena wouldn’t let herself go out in her opening round.

“I just said, ‘You’re not going to lose this match. You have to figure out a way to win it.”

While it may not have been her finest performance, Serena did manage to give the Indian Wells crowd a taste of what they’ve been missing here all of these years. She screamed, she fist-pumped, she fought back tears, and, at the end of each set, she found the winning shots she needed.

“I feel like I already won this tournament,” Serena said afterward. “I don’t feel like I actually have to hold the trophy at the end of this. I feel like I’m already holding up a trophy. I have never felt that way before. I feel like just being here is a huge win. Not only for me, but for so many people.”

Serena has said this week that “the timing was right” for her return—there seem to have been many reasons for her to choose this year to come back to Indian Wells. When she made the announcement in Time earlier this year, she said she believed that tennis had changed since 2001; as evidence, she cited the quick condemnation of the offensive comments that Russian Fed Cup captain Shamil Tarpischev made about Serena and her sister last year.

Change has come to tennis since 2001, and the Williams sisters may have more to do with it than anyone else. The evidence can be seen at Indian Wells, where African-Americans Taylor Townsend, Sloane Stephens, Donald Young, and Sachia Vickery have been in action, and where Madison Keys will make her debut on Saturday. Two players who have been conspicuous by their absences in Indian Wells are the crowd-pleasing Frenchmen Gael Monfils and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, neither of whom was on the tour, let alone in the Top 20, in 2001.

Fourteen years ago, the U.S. tennis audience and the Williams family had a contentious relationship. But things are different on that front as well; in 2012, Venus said she finally felt at home at her national Grand Slam, the U.S. Open, and Serena says she “felt the love” from the Indian Wells crowd on Friday night. There’s no more talk of fixed matches when it comes to the Williamses. They've been the flag-bearers for U.S. tennis for a decade, and their excellence over such a long period of time can’t be challenged. They changed the game by being who they are, and they made it better by playing it so well.

Serena didn’t show the Indian Wells crowd her best against Niculescu last night. But she could still say later, “It definitely feels like one of the biggest and proudest moments of my career.”

When she told the world she was coming back, Serena said she wanted to make "new memories" and write a better story at Indian Wells. Now she has: Instead of the memory of her being booed, Serena and the rest of us have the memory of her emotional return. In that sense, she really did win the tournament on Friday.

Yet even after winning the tournament, Serena still had to win a match. As she did, she also showed the crowd why she has been a champion for so long: She wouldn't let herself lose. She's a survivor.