Is this the year when Serena’s decline—yes, it’s going to happen to her, too—begins? One important statistic says it’s possible: She’ll be 34 to start the year, and 35 to end it. Even the sport’s ultimate doyen of durability, Martina Navratilova, won her last Grand Slam singles title at age 33. As she embarks on her 2016 campaign, Williams will be sailing into uncharted waters.
That said, no player in tennis has been as dominant as Williams at her age. Since she turned 30 in 2011, she has won eight of her 21 Grand Slam singles titles, and she’ll enter 2016 having been ranked No. 1 for 150 consecutive weeks, the third-longest streak in women’s tennis history. Even as Williams has moved further into her 30s, the competition hasn’t gained on her. She lost only three times last year, and never before the semifinal round.
Yet 2016 does feel like it could be different. If you go by her 53–3 record, Williams dominated in 2015. But if you look at the scores, she struggled, too. Yes, Williams is coming off what may have been her best season, but it was also a season that ended, as she said, with a “broken heart” at the US Open, where she was stunned in the semifinals by unseeded Roberta Vinci. After staying motivated and piling up majors for so long, will Williams finally take a step back? It will be this season’s biggest question.
Williams can afford to decline a little and still be the world’s best player for another year; no one is threatening to pass her in the rankings anytime soon. And even if she begins to feel her age in 2016, the goal of winning two more major titles to pass Steffi Graf on the all-time list should serve as career-extending motivation.
As Vinci showed at the US Open, not every close match will go Williams’ way. Becoming the all-time leader in major titles will motivate Williams, but it will also add pressure. It took Williams a year to win her 18th Slam and tie Navratilova and Chris Evert.
For the first time in five years, a letdown from Serena seems like a possibility. But that doesn’t mean anyone will rise to her level.
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