Serena Williams stakes claim for GOAT title with French Open win over Maria Sharapova

It’s a little odd to be talking about tennis history in the immediate aftermath of the final of a Grand Slam, but that’s what Serena Williams has done to women’s tennis: she has dominated it to the point of making its day-to-day events irrelevant. Is it really news at all that she straight-setted Maria Sharapova for what seems like the millionth time to capture her 2nd French Open title, and 16th Slam overall? If anything, the biggest news of the day was not that Williams won, but that Sharapova managed to make both the sets semi-competitive. I can almost hear the guys up in the news agency offices screaming, “Serena Williams DIDN’T win 6-1, 6-2 (or some similarly gaudy one-sided score)? Oh my God! What is the world coming to?”

Jokes aside, Williams’s triumph today, while not her most brutally dominant performance, was still quietly impressive in its own way. She never really found the range with her forehand, and she also dumped more than her fair share of returns either long or into the net, specially off her backhand side. Sharapova, meanwhile, played a really solid match, even if her 10-to-17 winner-to-error differential doesn’t suggest that. She made just 4 double faults, served big on most of the break points she faced, and stood toe-to-toe with Williams in many of the baseline exchanges. The errors that she did make came mostly in her return games, and they were ‘understandable’ errors, if there is such a thing – there’s no real point playing against Williams if you don’t go for broke on the return. And at one point, Sharapova even hit a textbook forehand drop volley for a winner! You know she’s feeling the ball well when she pulls off something as outrageous (for her) as that.

But despite all these seemingly mitigating factors, Williams still won in routine fashion. Apart from a brief period of play at the start of the match when Sharapova held two game points for a 3-0 first set lead, Williams never looked in any real danger of losing. For every power-packed backhand that Sharapova struck, Williams was comfortably in position to send another, more powerful reply, right back. For every stinging serve that Sharapova delivered, Williams was ready to get on to it in a flash and blast a return right at the Russian’s feet. For every sharp forehand that Sharapova powdered, Williams was waiting to redirect the ball and pummel it away for a winner.

The oft-repeated refrain about the Serena-Sharapova rivalry is that ‘everything that Sharapova can do, Serena can do better’. That pretty much held true today, except that this time, everything that Sharapova did, Williams did only slightly better, as opposed to the overwhelmingly better situation that she’s accustomed to. The most damning fact, however, is that even this ‘slightly better’ version of Williams, a version that she can probably conjure even if she’s playing at only 60% of her best level, is good enough to wipe the floor with the rest of the WTA.

No, Williams defeating Sharapova today to become only the 4th player in the Open Era to have won each Slam at least twice, is not news at all. What is news is that the American is now six Slams shy of the tally racked up by the consensus greatest female player of all time, Steffi Graf, and just two short of the haul that Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert managed to collect. Considering the way she’s playing right now, it’s not hard to imagine Williams galloping past all of these heavyweights and making a run for the ultimate record, the 24-Slam tally held by Margaret Court-Smith. But if she doesn’t, will that stop her from being considered the greatest player of all time?

A Slam tally, like age, is just a number. Nobody in his right mind would rate Court as a better player than Graf, even though the Australian won more Slams than the German. The competition was infinitely stronger in Graf’s era than it was in Court’s, and the fact that Graf could dominate the ‘feel’ players of the 80s as well as the power players of the 90s tilts the scales heavily in her favour.

How heavily should we tilt the scales in Williams’s favour, then? She has dominated the power players (hello Maria Sharapova), the finesse players (are you listening, Agnieszka Radwanksa?), the crafty counterpunchers (I almost didn’t see you there, Caroline Wozniacki), the skilled baseline defenders (where have you been, Victoria Azarenka?), and even the occasional big servers (it was nice meeting you, Samantha Stosur). She has won Slams coming in from the cold (Australian Open 2007), on the back of a sizzling run of form (US Open 2012) and when hobbled by injury (Australian Open 2010); she has won Slams as a teenager, as a dominant World No. 1 and as a seasoned veteran.

Williams has been there and done that alright; there’s nothing in the world of tennis that she hasn’t accomplished. Her most striking claim to greatness, however, goes far beyond numbers and records. There has never been any player in history, male or female, who has turned disdainfully dispatching his or her closest rivals into such an effortless habit as Williams has. And that other effortless habit of hers, making an out-of-the-blue comeback despite being on the brink of defeat, has gained enough applause from the entire world already.

Williams may not have the numbers in her kitty to stake a claim to the ‘Greatest of All Time’ title yet, but it’s pertinent to question whether she needs those numbers at all. She is already the most dominant player to have ever picked up a racquet (at least to my mind), and with her latest triumph on her least favourite surface, she has entered rarefied air. The truly scary part, though, is that she may eventually rack up the numbers anyway; she may be 31 years old, but as has been repeatedly proclaimed recently, she is playing the best tennis of her career right now, and is showing no signs of slowing down. Could it actually be possible that her best years are still ahead of her?

A comment that I’ve heard very frequently of late is that whenever Roger Federer steps on the court these days, he creates a new record. Well, it seems that whenever Serena Williams steps on the court these days, she gets closer to leaving the women’s competition behind and jostling, instead, with the male legends of the sport. With every Slam that she wins, we are going to be less inclined to compare her with the Grafs and the Navratilovas, and more with the Federers and Nadals. In fact, there was a joke doing the rounds yesterday that it would be much fairer if the men’s and women’s finals were interchanged, with Sharapova made to play David Ferrer, and Williams pitted against Rafael Nadal.

There can be no greater compliment to the greatest tennis player of all time than that.