A year after her toughest loss, Serena Williams returns to the U.S. Open as tenacious as ever

Nearly a year has passed since Serena Williams lost to Roberta Vinci in the semifinals of the 2015 U.S. Open. Serena didn’t play again in 2015, and when she returned this year, this most dominant of athletes was no longer as dominant as we had come to expect. In her first 25 Grand Slam finals, Serena had gone 21–4, the highest winning percentage in modern history. But in 2016, she lost the Australian Open final to Angelique Kerber and the French Open final to Garbiñe Muguruza before winning Wimbledon to tie Steffi Graf’s Open-era record of 22 career Grand Slam singles titles. She arrives in Flushing Meadows off a straight-sets loss to Elina Svitolina in the third round of the Olympics.

“My game is my mental toughness,” Serena said, “to not only be able to play to win, but to be able to come back when I’m down. Both on the court and after tough losses, just to continue to come back and continue to fight, it’s something that takes a lot of tenacity.”

Serena didn’t reference the Vinci match, but you could feel it in that phrase, “tough losses”—none had been as tough as that one. While the defeat appeared to deflate her at first, could it ultimately end up driving her at Flushing Meadows in 2016? Speculation of Serena’s chances to win a seventh U.S. Open title requires a look back at her last year, starting with what happened to her in New York last year.

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Serena’s 26-match run at the majors leading up to last year’s U.S. Open semifinal had been less about the domination of an all-time great athlete, and more about the resilience of an aging one. Serena had won 11 matches at the majors in three sets. She had fended off two all-out onslaughts from her most dangerous rival, Victoria Azarenka. She had outlasted a nasty cold at the Australian Open and a debilitating flu at the French Open. In her third-round match at Wimbledon, against England’s Heather Watson, Serena had silenced a raucous British crowd by wagging her finger and giving all 15,000 of them a stern warning: “Don’t try me.”

Two days earlier in New York, Serena had passed the most draining test of all: a three-set quarterfinal against her sister, Venus. Yet Serena’s tension-filled, 6–2, 1–6, 6–3 victory only increased the pressure; having beaten Venus, she owed it to her to win it all.

How much the calendar-year Grand Slam meant to Serena had been an open question. She had gone out of her way to say that, because the Slam had never been a goal before, she wasn’t going to make it a goal now.

“I told you getting to Wimbledon and winning the Serena Slam, that really meant a lot to me,” she said in Queens. “That tournament I felt on edge a lot. This one I don’t feel that way. I think people feel [nervous] more than I do, but I don’t feel like I need [the Grand Slam] more than anything.”

The New York crowd pulled for Serena the way few had pulled for her before. She felt it, and was surprised.

Serena had won the first set, 6–2. Early in the second, Vinci settled in and broke serve. At 4–3, though, Serena reached break point with a full-throttle forehand return winner.

During the next rally, Vinci did just enough to make Serena uncomfortable. Her second serve kicked into Serena’s body and jammed her. Two shots later, Vinci’s backhand slice stayed so low that Serena had to touch her left knee to the court to return it.

With a chance to approach the net, Vinci instead made Serena track down a delicately sliced drop shot. She made a beeline for Vinci’s dropper, lined up a crosscourt forehand and—shanked it 10 feet wide.

The match had reached its turning point, but for the first time all year at a major, it had turned against Serena. Vinci would ultimately end their match the way she had played the last two sets, with a deft and surprising touch shot that Serena couldn’t reach.

Yet Serena walked out of Ashe with her index finger raised high. She was reminding us that she was still No. 1. A few minutes later, Serena told reporters, “I did win three Grand Slams this year. Yeah, I won four in a row. It’s pretty good.”

But her coach Patrick Mouratoglou knew that “pretty good” wasn’t enough.

“For Serena, only winning the trophy is expected,” says Mouratoglou. “Winning four Grand Slams in a row, three the same year, and reaching the semis of the fourth, is a feeling of failure. Nothing else.”

In pulling out of her final three events of 2015, Serena cited the broken heart she had suffered during “a certain match in Flushing.”

“This is the biggest moment of my career and I didn’t get it,” Williams said in the EPIX documentary Serena. “I’ve never been in this position, so close to having something and losing it, or not getting it.

“I’ve let a lot of people down. You give a lot of people hope that they could do something that’s impossible. But hell, I couldn’t do it either.”

Serena has often found fresh motivation in her defeats, and even her doubts. She has spent 2016 fighting the doubts that doomed her against Vinci and proving herself all over again.

When she returns to Flushing Meadows, Serena will be trying to win her seventh U.S. Open title. She’ll also have another, perhaps greater motivation: To show that in her toughest defeat she can find her greatest inspiration.

For more on the Serena-Vinci semifinal, read Steve Tignor’s report from last year’s U.S. Open.