'Meeka' shall inherit the earth ... or else!
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday January 9, 2010
After her outburst at the US Open, Serena 'Meeka' Williams is lucky to be in Sydney at all today. But here she is ... and how. Will Swanton reports. "The general consensus was that I was a big, fat cow. That's what I kept hearing. My best days on the tour were behind me. They said I was a lost soul who'd been away from the game for too long to get back to the top. My first thought was, 'Moo'."Serena Williams arrives in Sydney today. Baby got backbone. She will strut off a United Airlines flight, strut through the airport at Mascot, strut through the Sydney International and then strut through her defence of the Australian Open. A giant of world sport is among us.Sydney is where it all began for Williams, 12 long years ago when a sassy 16-year-old offered the first sign of becoming more than some soulless diva and/or glamazon of the WTA Tour. Sydney was where a remarkable character first became the ultimate warrior of women's tennis; it was where she pulled out the first jaw-dropping upset of her career, toppling Lindsay Davenport while unveiling the one weapon she has since relied on more than any other while amassing 11 major championships, two Olympic doubles gold medals, the most prizemoney of any female athlete in sports history at $US28.5 million and an ongoing hold on the world No.1 ranking. Sydney was where she first revealed the backbone.It was January 1998. It was the good old NSW Open at White City. Davenport was the world No.3. Williams was barely inside the top 100. She lost the first set 6-1. She trailed 5-2 in the second. The commentators, sitting in a booth now occupied by hobos, started packing up when she lagged 40-15 on Davenport's serve. "She came back and won," sister Venus recalled more than a decade later. "It was so intense. We saved the newspaper article. It was called 'White City's Great Escape'. We'd read it over and over again, about how she overcame all the odds and won that match. That's classic Serena Williams."Classic Serena Williams has since involved constant repeats of White City's Great Escape. She storms through deficits like some kind of human force of nature, clawing her way back from the impossibilities of set and match points down, screaming like a banshee, staring at the Kim Clijsters, Maria Sharapovas and Nadia Petrovas on the end of her revivals with a look that says more than a thousand insulting words ever could.She was the self-described runt of the Williams litter, the smallest and feistiest of five sisters, and therein lies the origins of the backbone. Somehow, she had to match the more statuesque, the more talented, the more beautiful, the more perfect elder sister, Venus. "There was no living up to her," Serena wrote in her biography, Queen of the Court. "She was taller, prettier, quicker, more athletic. And she was certainly NICER." Her father, Richard, let the cat out of the bag in the biggest hint of all that Serena would end up BETTER: "Serena is the meaner of the two."She was thought to be a big, fat cow before the Australian Open of 2007. Her world ranking had ballooned to No.81, only one place worse than when she was 16 and forging her identity against Davenport. Two barren years had passed since her last meaningful tournament win. Empowered by what she called the "silent fuel" of criticism, Williams went on a near-violent rampage in Melbourne, tearing apart six seeded players and mauling the top seed Sharapova 6-1, 6-2 in the final. The ferocity of that performance, just the crazed desire to prove everyone wrong, was a demonstration of an almost feral determination. That wasn't a tennis match, it was a cage fight, and only one woman was prepared to go bare-knuckle.In her most gruelling battles, when the thundering strokes are off kilter, she grunts like a wild boar in an attempt to intimidate. But against Sharapova, and in all her most dominant victories, an eerie calm falls upon her. Nothing is more scary than a whisper. She becomes untouchable in her quiet moods. Written notes are read at the change of ends: "What would U do if U were not afraid?"Williams grew backbone while dodging bullets growing up in the dirt at Compton in Los Angeles: "If you can keep playing tennis when somebody is shooting a gun down the street, that's concentration." She used backbone while moving out of the shadow of an elder sister who was taller, prettier, quicker, more athletic and certainly nicer: "One year, three months, nine days. That's the age difference. I wanted to do everything just like Venus. Whenever we went to a restaurant, my mom would make me order first, because if I didn't, I'd just order whatever Venus ordered."She needed backbone when her father let her and Venus play only against adults as a kid: "Luck has nothing to do with it because I have spent many, many hours, countless hours, on the court working for my one moment in time, not knowing when it would come."And she still calls on the backbone required to prove her worth beside big sister: "I can't become satisfied. The fact that I'm making history right now, it doesn't happen every day ... but now people are really going to be fighting to beat me."Her win-loss record against Venus Ebony Starr Williams is 13-10. Her sister has a mere seven major titles while Serena's double-digit haul trails only Margaret Court, Steffi Graf, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King. The consensus is Serena Jameka Williams is no longer a big, fat cow.The family calls her Meeka but that's wrong, too. The meek don't come this far. She is unlikely to win in Sydney. Her record in non-majors is disproportionately poor, but she couldn't give a hoot. The 28-year-old is all about prime time, showtime, peaking at the right time for her tilt at a fifth Australian Open.She huffed and puffed through a series of unconvincing wins at the Sydney International last year before Russia's Elena Dementieva bundled her out in a couple of underwhelming straight sets. Williams said she was still the best player in the world. Computer said no. Jelena Jankovic was ranked No.1. A fortnight later, a fourth Australian Open was stuffed in Williams's racquet bag and another Wimbledon victory was on its way. The bigger the occasion, and the more intense the criticisms and disparaging remarks, the more baby gets backbone and the more aggressively she begins to moo.
© 2010 Sydney Morning Herald
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