Serena Williams competed in her first Australian Open, also her first Grand Slam event, 18 years ago in 1998, losing 7-6(4) 6-1 in the second round to sister Venus.
Since that time, along with unparalleled excellence as an athlete, she has had many incarnations – Serena (and Venus) with beaded hair, Serena in the black ‘cat-suit,’ in a leopard-pattern dress, in her current yellow bare midriff outfit and, most recently, on the cover of Sports Illustratedin an imperious, leggy, high-heeled pose as the magazine’s 2015 Sportsperson of the Year.
She has twice achieved the so-called ‘Serena Slam’ – four in a row from 2002 Roland Garros to the 2003 Australian Open, and from the 2014 US Open to 2015 Wimbledon – a noteworthy 12 years apart.
On Saturday night, as she attempts to tie Steffi Graf with an Open Era 22 Grand Slam singles titles – which would be two behind Aussie great Margaret Court’s 24 – her late career surge can be traced to a humbling 2012 first-round loss to Frenchwoman Virginie Razzano at Roland Garros. Immediately after that she trained at Patrick Mouratoglou’s tennis academy in Paris, and the eponymous coach soon took over responsibility for guiding her tennis.
Williams has since won eight of the last 14 Grand Slam events.
There was, of course, that earth-shattering stumble in the US Open semifinals last September when the unheralded Roberta Vinci ruined her much-hyped bid for a calendar-year Grand Slam.
Before Flushing Meadows last year, Williams, feeling the weight of expectation, said she was just anxious for the event to be over.
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