By Chris Chase
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Serena
Williams (Getty Images)
The world No. 1 won 11 titles and two
Grand Slams.
Serena Williams finished 2013 with 11
titles, two Grand Slams, 78 overall wins and a decisive finish atop the WTA
rankings. At 32, did the American tennis star just complete the greatest season
of her career?
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Two reasons it’s not Serena’s best year
ever:
1. She failed to make the semifinals at
two Grand Slams. Serena lost in the quarters of the Australian Open to Sloane
Stephens and was stunned in the fourth round of Wimbledon by Sabine Lisicki. In
both matches, she was up a break in a decisive set and appeared on the way to
cruising into the next round, but failed to close in both. Over the past two
seasons, the only person capable of beating Serena has been Serena.
2. In 2002, she won three Grand Slams.
In 2013, Serena won two, a total she’s matched in four other years (2003, 2009,
2010 and 2012). The other tournaments are nice, but when discussing the
greatest players ever, you don’t look at their Premiere Mandatory results.
Grand Slams are the currency of tennis greatness and 3 > 2.
Five reasons it might be:
1. Serena’s 78 wins in 2013 are 20 more
than she had in any other season. Twenty!
2. Her 11 tournament titles and 13
finals are the most of her career. (In 2002, she had eight and 11,
respectively.) From 2010-2012, Serena won a total of 11 tournaments.
Also, the 11 wins are the most for any WTA player since Martina Hingis had 12
in 1997. The last player to win more than 11 before Hingis was Steffi Graf in
1989.
3. Serena’s 95% winning percentage is
the highest of her career, eking out the 94% she had with last year’s 58-4
mark.
4. She won in Miami, Madrid, Rome,
Canada, Beijing and at the WTA Championships. That’s six wins in Mandatory
Premiere and Premier 5 tournaments. In the past eight years, Serena won seven
titles in those tournaments. She also took home her first French Open title in
more than a decade.
5. Rankings points are arbitrary and confusing.
But this isn’t: Serena had 13,260 rankings points in 2013. World No. 2 Victoria
Azarenka had 8,046. The gap between Serena and Vika (5,014 points) is about the
same as the one between Vika and world No. 16 Ana Ivanovic.
One reason it is absolutely, positively
Serena Williams’ best year ever:
She’s 32 years old. Steffi Graf
won one Grand Slam after turning 28 and retired almost immediately after
turning 30. Chris Evert didn’t win a Slam after turning 31. Even the greatest
older tennis player in women’s history, Martina Navratilova, could only tally
two Grand Slams at 30, plus a career-capping Wimbledon title at 33.
Serena is 12 months away from being old
enough to crack the top 10 list of oldest players to win a WTA title. At an age
when the players she’s chasing down in the history books were either in the
twilight of their careers or out of the game altogether, Serena is having a
second prime.
For years, people said she wasn’t interested enough in tennis and
was sacrificing her place in tennis history because of she wasn’t committed to
the game. It seems that Serena knew what was best all along. Taking her foot
off the throttle at 24 may have kept her fresh for her early-30s. At a time
when other players are dialing back their schedules, Serena played the most
matches of her career.
What Serena Williams is doing at her
age is unprecedented. Many have dominated the game when they were young. None
have been atop the tennis world like in their 30s like Serena.
Source: USA TODAY Sports
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