By Simon Briggs
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Legend:
a beaming Serena Williams with the US Open trophy Photo: GETTY IMAGES
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Serena Williams and Caroline Wozniacki
may describe themselves as "besties", but the world No. 1 had no
compunction in crushing the challenger on Sunday to lift the US Open title.
Williams won a one-sided final 6-3, 6-3
to claim her 18th major title and move into a three-way tie on the all-time
leaderboard alongside Chris Evert and Martina Navatilova, the two giants of the
1980s. New York has become Williams's banker in recent years.
This was her third successive US Open
title, since her unexpected defeat in the 2011 final against Australia's Sam
Stosur. And, like all the others, it raised a familiar question. If Williams is
this good as she approaches her 33rd birthday, how many more biggies can she
land?
Ahead of her are only the inter-war
champion Helen Wills Moody (19), the elegant German Steffi Graf (22) and the
Australian great Margaret Court (24). This weekend, we heard Williams's former
Fed Cup captain Billie Jean King suggest that Graf's mark is very much within
reach.
"How long can she go on for?"
said King, in an interview with The Telegraph. "It's down to
whether she wants to pay the price or not. I played until 40. She hasn't had
major operations which is what I look at. She is a phenomenal athlete.
"She gets a lot of free points on
her serve and that's a major factor. Both Serena and Venus go in and out [in
their commitment to tennis], because they have other interests, but lately they
are in because they realise they are getting older and time is starting to run
out."
After what has been the most
entertaining WTA season for some years, this was a disappointing contest,
simply because Wozniacki lacked the firepower to make it competitive. Since
Maria Sharapova outlasted Simona Halep in the second-longest French Open final
in history, the year's final two set-pieces both produced blowouts, with the
previous instance being Petra Kvitova's destruction of Eugenie Bouchard in the
Wimbledon final.
Sunday's match was always going to be a
big ask for Wozniacki, who was playing only her second grand slam final after
she lost to Kim Clijsters here five years ago. She is a scavenging sort of
player who relies on shoe leather rather than weight of shot. Here, she really
was reduced to feeding off scraps.
It used to be said of Wozniacki that
she could go through a whole match without hitting a clean winner, yet still
scramble enough balls back to win. This summer, she had made a few improvements
to her game, souping up her serve and generally becoming more assertive. But
most athletes are prone to reverting to type under pressure, and this match –
played against arguably the best player in history in front of a 20,000-strong
crowd – was the definition of pressure.
In the first set, Williams was uncharacteristically
profligate with her serve, landing the first delivery only 41 per cent of the
time and committing a couple of rare double-faults. But while this allowed
Wozniacki to score two breaks of serve and stay in some sort of touch, the
rallies off the ground were hopelessly one-sided. The only points Williams lost
were the ones she gifted with occasionally wild errors.
Wearing the leopard-print dress that
she has used all tournament, Williams was indeed the predator on Arthur Ashe
Stadium, and she began to play with more freedom and accuracy in the second
set. At the end of the match, clean winners made up almost half of her points
(29 from 65). For Wozniacki, by contrast, there were only four successful shots
that her opponent could not get a racket to, and three of those were aces.
"Congratulations Serena,"
said Wozniacki afterwards. "You're an unbelievable champion and an
inspiration to me on and off the court. You're an unbelievable friend and you
definitely owe me drinks later."
Perhaps we should have expected a
Williams victory from the very beginning of the tournament. The last time she
played all four majors in a season and failed to win at least one of them was
all the way back in 2001, when she was 19 years old. She was due; the only surprise
is that she had not managed to impose herself on any of the year's three
previous slams, going out before the quarter-finals on each occasion.
Was the prospect of catching Evert and
Navratilova a daunting one?
Certainly Williams has been touchy all
year about discussing the prospect of an 18th major. And you have to wonder
whether, if she had happened to get there at the first time of asking
in Australia, her season might have progressed more smoothly.
As it was, it has been a turbulent nine
months, featuring rumours about cracks in her relationship with coach -“ and
boyfriend? - Patrick Mouratoglou, and then that bizarrely uncoordinated display
during her doubles match at Wimbledon, which was later blamed on a virus.
But Williams has finished the season
strongly, and here she collected the biggest cheque in the history of the game
- a $4m (£2.3m) payout that also takes in the bonus she earned for
dominating the American hard-court build-up to this tournament. Her aura is
very much intact.
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk
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