Leave it to Serena Williams to not want to go quietly, to not want this match, this trip to the U.S. Open, this transcendent career of hers, to really, truly end.<\/p>\n
Right down to what were, barring a change of heart, the final minutes of her quarter–<\/span>century of excellence on the tennis court, and an unbending unwillingness to be told what wasn\u2019t possible, Williams tried to mount one last classic comeback, earn one last vintage victory, with fans on their feet in a full Arthur Ashe Stadium, cellphone cameras at the ready.<\/p>\n The 23–<\/span>time Grand Slam champion staved off five match points to prolong the three–<\/span>hours–<\/span>plus proceedings, but could not do more, and was eliminated from the U.S. Open in the third round by Ajla Tomljanovic 7–<\/span>5, 6–<\/span>7 (4), 6–<\/span>1 on Friday night in what is expected to be her final contest.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been down before. … I don\u2019t really give up,\u201d Williams said. \u201cIn my career, I\u2019ve never given up. In matches, I don\u2019t give up. Definitely wasn\u2019t giving up tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n She turns 41 this month and recently told the world that she is ready to start \u201cevolving\u201d away from her playing days \u2014 she expressed distaste for the word \u201cretirement\u201d \u2014 and while she remained purposely vague about whether this appearance at Flushing Meadows definitely would represent her last hurrah, everyone assumed it will be.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been the most incredible ride and journey I\u2019ve ever been on in my life,\u201d Williams said, tears streaming down her cheeks shortly after one final shot landed in the net. \u201cI\u2019m so grateful to every single person that\u2019s ever said, \u2018Go, Serena!\u2019 in their life.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked during an on–<\/span>court interview whether she might reconsider walking away, Williams replied: \u201cI don\u2019<\/span>t think so, but you never know.\u201d<\/p>\n A little later, pressed on the same topic at her post–<\/span>match news conference, Williams joked, \u201cI always did love Australia,\u201d the country that hosts the next Grand Slam tournament in January.<\/p>\n With two victories in singles this week, including over the No. 2 player in the world, Anett Kontaveit, on Wednesday, Williams took her fans on a thrill–<\/span>a–<\/span>minute throwback trip at the hard–<\/span>court tournament that was the site of a half–<\/span>dozen of her championships.<\/p>\n The first came in 1999 in New York, when Williams was a teen. Now she\u2019<\/span>s married and a mother; her daughter, Olympia, turned 5 on Thursday.<\/p>\n \u201cClearly, I\u2019m still capable. … (But) I\u2019m ready to be a mom, explore a different version of Serena,\u201d she said. \u201cTechnically, in the world, I\u2019m still super young, so I want to have a little bit of a life while I\u2019m still walking.\u201d<\/p>\n With 23,859 of her closest friends cheering raucously again Friday, Williams faltered against Tomljanovic, a 29–<\/span>year–<\/span>old Australian who is ranked 46th.<\/p>\n Williams gave away leads in each set, including the last, in which she was up 1–<\/span>0 before dropping the final six games.<\/p>\n Tomljanovic is unabashedly a fan of Williams, having growing up watching her play on TV.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019<\/span>m feeling really sorry, just because I love Serena just as much as you guys do. And what she\u2019<\/span>s done for me, for the sport of tennis, is incredible,\u201d said Tomljanovic, who has never been past the quarterfinals at any major. \u201cThis is a surreal moment for me.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, drawing laughs, Tomljanovic added: \u201cI just thought she would beat me. … She\u2019s Serena. That\u2019<\/span>s that\u2019s just who she is: She\u2019<\/span>s the greatest of all time. Period.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Asked what she planned to do on the first day of the rest of her life Saturday, Williams said she\u2019<\/span>d rest, spend time with Olympia and then added: \u201cI\u2019m definitely probably going to be karaoke–<\/span>ing.\u201d<\/p>\n Her performance with her racket Friday showed grit and featured some terrific serving, but it was not perfect.<\/p>\n On one point in the second set, Williams\u2019 feet got tangled and she fell to the court, dropping her racket. She finished with 51 unforced errors, 21 more than Tomljanovic.<\/p>\n Williams let a 5–<\/span>3 lead vanish in the first set. She did something similar in the second, giving away edges of 4–<\/span>0 and 5–<\/span>2, and requiring five set points to finally put that one in her pocket. From 4–<\/span>all in the tiebreaker, meaning Williams was three points from defeat, she pounded a 117 mph ace, hit a forehand winner to cap a 20–<\/span>stroke exchange, then watched Tomljanovic push a forehand long.<\/p>\n Momentum appeared to be on Williams\u2019<\/span> side. But she could not pull off the sort of never–<\/span>admit–<\/span>defeat triumph she did so often over the years.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, my God, thank you so much. You guys were amazing today. I tried,\u201d Williams told the audience, hands on her hips, before mentioning, among others, her parents and her older sister, Venus, a seven–<\/span>time major champion who is 42.<\/p>\n \u201cI wouldn\u2019<\/span>t be Serena if there wasn\u2019<\/span>t Venus. So thank you, Venus,\u201d Williams said. \u201cShe\u2019<\/span>s the only reason that Serena Williams ever existed.\u201d<\/p>\n They started in tennis as kids in Compton, California, coached by their father, Richard, who taught himself about the sport after watching on television while a player received a winner\u2019<\/span>s check. He was the central figure in the Oscar–<\/span>winning film \u201cKing Richard,\u201d<\/span> produced by his daughters.<\/p>\n The siblings lost together in the first round of doubles on Thursday night, drawing another sellout. And on Friday, as during the younger Williams\u2019 other outings this week, there could be no doubt about which player the paying public favored.<\/p>\n When Tomljanovic broke to go up 6–<\/span>5 as part of a four–<\/span>game run to take the opening set, one person in her guest box rose to applaud \u2014 and he was pretty much on his own.<\/p>\n Otherwise, folks applauded when Tomljanovic double–<\/span>faulted, generally considered a faux pas for tennis crowds.<\/p>\n They got loud in the middle of lengthy exchanges, also frowned upon.<\/p>\n They offered sympathetic sounds of \u201cAwwwwww\u201d when Williams flubbed a shot, and leapt out of their seats when she did something they found extraordinary. A rather routine service break was cause for a standing ovation.<\/p>\n Tomljanovic draped a blue–<\/span>and–<\/span>white U.S. Open towel over her head at changeovers, shielding herself from the noise and distractions.<\/p>\n \u201cJust really blocked it out as much as I could. It did get to me a few times, internally. I mean, I didn\u2019t take it personally because, I mean, I would be cheering for Serena, too, if I wasn\u2019t playing her,\u201d Tomljanovic said. \u201cBut it was definitely not easy.\u201d<\/p>\n After Williams struck a swinging backhand volley winner to take a 4–<\/span>0 lead in the second set, her play improving with every passing moment, the reaction was earsplitting. Billie Jean King, a Hall of Famer with 39 total Grand Slam titles across singles, doubles and mixed doubles, raised her cellphone to capture the scene.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re everywhere!\u201d yelled Williams\u2019 husband, Reddit co–<\/span>founder Alexis Ohanian, from a courtside guest box that also contained power couple Ciara and Russell Wilson.<\/p>\n When Williams drove two consecutive forehand winners to lead 5–<\/span>2 in the second set, she screamed and leaned forward after each.<\/p>\n She could not sustain that level.<\/p>\n Williams entered the night having won 19 times in a row in the U.S. Open\u2019s third round of singles competition, including reaching at least the semifinals in her most recent 11 appearances in New York.<\/p>\n Talk about a full–<\/span>circle moment: The only other third–<\/span>round loss she\u2019s ever had at Flushing Meadows (she is 42–<\/span>0 in the first and second rounds) came in 1998, the year Williams made her tournament debut at age 16.<\/p>\n She would win her first major trophy 12 months later at the U.S. Open. And now she said goodbye in that same stadium.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019<\/span>s been a long time. I\u2019ve been playing tennis my whole life,\u201d Williams said Friday night, after performing one last twirl–<\/span>and–<\/span>wave move usually reserved for victories. \u201cIt is a little soon, but I\u2019<\/span>m also happy because, I mean, this is what I wanted, what I want.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Leave it to Serena Williams to not want to go quietly, to not want this match, this trip to the U.S. Open, this transcendent career of hers, to really, truly end. Right down to what were, barring a change of heart, the final minutes of her quarter–century of excellence on the tennis court, and an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":25306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6409],"tags":[9951,1374,1293,2226,3347,8249,2848,13263,834,1279,10507,2808,9026,2024,3545,6225,7090,1445,831,9246,11493,7236,3874,10634,6220,9349,8126,1993,990,11973,5399,8443,835,927,336,11259,5324,5538,6178,10885,6571,3954,12851,36,594,5140],"class_list":["post-25305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-age","tag-alexis","tag-alexis-ohanian","tag-arthur","tag-australia","tag-australian","tag-california","tag-cap","tag-ciara","tag-circle","tag-court","tag-daughter","tag-fans","tag-flushing","tag-founder","tag-friends","tag-games","tag-god","tag-grand-slam","tag-improving","tag-interview","tag-kids","tag-lead","tag-lost","tag-love","tag-married","tag-match","tag-my-life","tag-new-york","tag-one","tag-oscar","tag-retirement","tag-russell-wilson","tag-serena-william","tag-serena-williams","tag-shot","tag-stroke","tag-tennis","tag-venus","tag-victory","tag-white","tag-will","tag-winners","tag-world","tag-who","tag-young"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}