Warning Shot

"Serena has gone to the brink many times this season. Who will finally be able to push her over?"

I’ve written lines similar to those on a few occasions in 2015, and last night in Toronto I finally got my answer, when Belinda Bencic of Switzerland held on to upset Serena Williams and end her 19-match winning streak, 3-6, 7-5, 6-4.

On the one hand, this is a surprise: Bencic is 18, she’s ranked No. 20, she’s won one tournament in her career, and she had lost her only previous meeting to Serena 6-2, 6-1 in Madrid last spring. On that occasion, Bencic had admitted to being distracted just watching Serena, the woman she had seen so many times on TV, play in person. (Bencic was 2 years old when Serena won her first major, at the 1999 U.S. Open.) Before yesterday, Serena hadn’t lost to a teenager since Maria Sharapova beat her 11 years ago.

Look a little more closely, though, and it’s clear that Bencic’s performance shouldn’t have been a shock. We’ve known since at least last year’s U.S. Open, where she made the quarterfinals at 17, that this student of the Hingis family is, as they say, for real. Coming into her semi in Toronto, Bencic had already knocked off Eugenie Bouchard, Caroline Wozniacki, Sabine Lisicki and Ana Ivanovic—all of them former Grand Slam finalists.

As I wrote earlier in the week, Bencic combines Hingisian court sense with modern day ground-stroke pop. Most important for beating Serena, this young woman brings to mind an old-fashioned word: Moxie. Bencic tightened up at the end of the second set and third set, yet recovered to win them both. At 18, with the blind confidence of youth, she’s still testing her limits and making breakthroughs as a player every day. In her mind, why shouldn’t one of those breakthroughs include beating Serena Williams?

And Serena knew it. She knows Bencic is different from so many of the other women she has edged out in close matches this season, different from Heather Watson and Lucie Safarova and Sloane Stephens. And as far as her own game goes, she knew she couldn’t win without her best forever.

“I think I played really crappy today,” said Serena, who double-faulted 12 times. “I’ll try to be politically correct. And I don’t think you would disagree. I actually played a couple matches like this this year, but I was able to get through them, but against the better players, you have to not play like this. I just really, really didn’t play up to par today.”

I wonder what was more thrilling for Bencic: To beat Serena, or to hear her refer her to as one of “the better players”?

Now the question is whether this loss should make Serena and her fans worry a little more about what’s coming at the U.S. Open. Will the rest of the WTA’s upper echelon be emboldened by watching this teenager, of all people, beat her? Will Serena’s confidence be shaken knowing that, yes, she can still lose a three-set match? Does this indicate that, if her serve is off, all bets are off? Has a spell been broken?

Recent history says the answer to all of these questions is a resounding no.

Serena has won the last three U.S. Opens, but in none of those years did she win every match on the road to Flushing Meadows. In 2012, she skipped the Rogers Cup after winning Olympic gold, and then lost to Angelique Kerber in the quarterfinals in Cincinnati. In 2013, she won the title in Toronto before losing to Victoria Azarenka in the Cincy final. Last year, she lost in the semifinals in Montreal to her sister Venus and bounced back to win the titles in Cincy and New York. Also, earlier this year, Serena failed to win either of the tune-ups for the French Open, but she still held the winner’s trophy in Paris.

Oh, and as for whether Bencic can come up with a repeat performance the next time they play, she may not want to think too hard about what Serena has done to that other teenager, Sharapova, who dared to beat her.

Yet the issue of Serena’s habitual brinksmanship in 2015 remains. This loss may have been a one-off, but her erratic play, slow starts, and mid-match lulls have been issues since the Australian Open, especially at the majors. Nine of her 21 wins at the Slams this season have come in three sets. On the one hand, that lack of total, set-by-set dominance made her second Serena Slam even more impressive than the first. On the other hand, that lack of total, set-by-set dominance must worry her camp the most.

Even for a player with as much bedrock self-belief as Serena, being No. 1 for such a long, uninterrupted stretch—she’s been there for 130 straight weeks—must be wearing. Being expected not just to win every match, but to destroy every opponent, will obviously take its toll on a player’s nerves, and I think we’ve seen that from Serena this season.

“Maybe I’m a little stressed out,” Serena said in the middle of her quarterfinal with Roberta Vinci. “Maybe I need to give myself a hug.”

The stress only seemed to get worse against Bencic.

“I can’t [bleeping] play anymore, I’m sorry,” Serena told her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, as her famous serve continued to fizzle.

Which is why this loss might end up helping her. I won’t say it’s the best thing that could have happened to Serena, but it will keep her from having to deal with questions about a winning streak at the Open—the calendar-year Slam is quite enough pressure. It will also remind her that any dips in form or concentration really can lead to a defeat. Most important, rather than feeling as if she’s always defending her position at No. 1, perhaps this will allow her to have a more attacking, I-have-something-to-prove mindset in the way she approaches the next two tournaments. She can take a breath now.

Maybe that I-have-something-to-prove mindset has already begun to form inside her. As Serena walked off court in Toronto on Saturday night, she raised her arm and pointed her index finger skyward. “I’m still No. 1,” was the message. She’s not going to let us forget it anytime soon.