One for the Books

The last time I saw Serena Williams, she was making a hasty exit from the interview room inside Arthur Ashe Stadium. She had just lost to Roberta Vinci in the U.S. Open semifinals, and I wondered, as she bolted for the door, when we might see her again. After living with the pressure of trying to win a calendar-year Grand Slam, only to come up just short against a 100-to-1 long shot, was Serena really going to travel to Beijing and Singapore to finish the season? I had trouble picturing it.

I don’t need to wonder any longer: On Thursday, Serena said that she was withdrawing from both of those events and, aside from possible exhibitions, shutting it down for 2015. As she has all year, Serena showed a flair for the dramatic in her announcement.

“It’s no secret I’ve played hurt most of the year,” Williams said. “Whether it was my elbow, my knee, or in the final moments after a certain match in Flushing, my heart.”

“This is a very difficult decision, but one ultimately made because of the love of the game.”

“I plan to return to practicing and participating in exhibition matches later this year. And when I do, I will focus and focus and focus so I can continue my journey in this beautiful game.”

Serena has been criticized for her decision to skip two mandatory events, and officials in Beijing and Singapore will have a right to be unhappy if and when they see her playing in the exhibitions she mentions. Singapore, the tour’s showcase year-ender, will suffer in particular, and Serena will have to take whatever penalties from the tour that are coming.

But as I wrote at the top, the move shouldn’t be a surprise. Yes, Serena has played through the fall in recent years, and she’s capped her last three stellar seasons with three wins at the WTA Finals. But her priority has always been the majors, and as she tries to tie Steffi Graf on the all-time Slam-title list with 22, that may be even more true today.

This season is also different from the last three for Serena. She turned 34 in September—Chris Evert retired when she was that age, and Graf had been gone from the game for four years by then. Longevity-wise, after nearly two decades on tour, Serena is heading into territory trod only by Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King among the game’s modern legends. Winning Slams and being No. 1 at 30 is one thing; doing it at 34 and 35 is another. While Navratilova was still on tour in her late 40s, she won her last major at Wimbledon in 1990, when she was 33.

Just as important for Serena is what she did in 2015. She mentioned her injuries in her statement on Thursday, but this was also the most psychologically stressful season of her career. First there was the French Open, which she won seemingly from her death bed. Then there was the quest for the Serena Slam at Wimbledon, which she refused even to address over the course of the fortnight. Then there was the quest for the calendar-year Grand Slam at the U.S. Open. That’s a lot of pressure to play under, on a daily basis, for a period of months, and the cracks showed. They showed in the French final when she struggled to put Lucie Safarova away. They showed at Wimbledon, where she nearly lost to Heather Watson, and struggled again to put away her final-round opponent, Garbiñe Muguruza. Finally, in her 27th Slam match, the cracks went all the way through: Serena couldn’t find a way to play around her nerves against Vinci.

“I did win three Grand Slams this year,” Serena said after that loss. “Yeah, I won four in a row. It’s pretty good.”

No one knew better than her what a battle—with her opponents and with herself—it had been to get that far.

In the weeks since, I’ve wondered how and when Serena would get herself back up to go into battle. For the first time in recent years, it seems to me that she is in danger of having a letdown next season. Serena has been on a relentless trip up the Grand Slam leader board over the last few years, and tying and passing Graf will remain a big, career-extending motivation for her. But with the loss to Vinci, there was also major disappointment in 2015—a broken heart, as Serena herself said. Was she destined to stall at 21, one shy of Steffi, the way she had at 17, when she was one shy of Evert’s and Navratilova’s 18? Even with no serious competition for her throne at the moment, a dry spell seemed like a possibility.

Serena, it seems, understood that bouncing back wouldn’t be easy, and that keeping her “love for the game” going at 34 and 35 would mean getting away from it before starting a new campaign. With the No. 1 ranking locked up for this year, and no chance to catch Graf until next year, the decision made sense.

“It’s unimaginable what it’s like to win that much,” Serena’s sister, Venus, said in Wuhan on Thursday. “It’s hard on you. It’s hard on your body.”

“It’s a great problem. But you just get down to nothing.”

Serena’s 2015 is in the books, and it was one for the books. At 33, she won three majors, went 53-3, and played at Indian Wells for the first time in 14 years. There were moments to remember from start to finish: The ace, and ace again, at match point against Maria Sharapova in the Australian Open final; the five straight “Flu Game” wins at the French Open; the “Don’t try me” wave to the Wimbledon crowd during her comeback against Watson; and her two fierce night-match victories at the U.S. Open, over Bethanie Mattek-Sands and her sister. The match she ultimately lost, to Vinci, may have been the season’s best.

See you next year, Serena—you’ve given us more than enough drama, and excellence, in 2015.