In 2011, as the Williams sisters battled illness and injuries, filmmakers Maiken Baird and Michelle Major were granted unprecedented access to their family home in Florida.
The following year, they released Venus and Serena – a documentary that gave an inside look at the Williams family and allowed the sisters to tell their remarkable story.
One of the more memorable lines from the film was younger sister Serena’s thoughts on growing up in the shadow of Venus. “I was never the one that was supposed to be good,” she says, “but I was determined not to be a statistic.”
Serena is certainly not a statistic. But then, it is impossible to talk about the world No 1 without mentioning the incredible stats she has compiled: her grand slam titles (21), her domination of peers (she is 55-6 against top-10 players since 2012) and her incredible longevity (her first grand slam title was in 1999).
Perhaps the most significant of those numbers is her recent turnaround, most notably since she turned 30 on September 26, 2011. Serena has taken part in 52 tournaments since the start of 2012 and has made it to the final in 31 of those, losing only two.
Eight of her 21 grand slam titles have come during this period, and last month she became the oldest woman to win a major following her Wimbledon triumph.
“I’m kind of in awe of her right now,” Chris Evert said in an interview with USA Today. “She wins the French Open not even playing well. She didn’t even play well at the Australian Open.”
Last week, Serena conceded she has not been playing at her peak, but she has been able to count on her tenacity to drag her out of difficult situations. There have been more than a few of them at the grand slams in 2015.
At the first three grand slams of the year, Serena was stretched to three sets in nine of her 21 matches (43 per cent), but she managed to win all nine. Before this year, 64 of her 298 matches at the majors had gone to three sets and she lost 19 of them (29 per cent).
In seven of those nine matches, Serena lost the opening set but still managed to find a way back. In previous years at Roland Garros, she had won five of the 11 matches where she had lost the opening set; this year, she fought to win all four. Prior to 2015, she was 26-12 in three-setters where she had lost the opening set.
Those statistics lay bare her increasing determination to win. Serena has always been an incredible front-runner (19-0 in grand slam finals where she has won the first set), but only modestly successful in fighting back (2-4 after losing the first set in grand slam finals).
This new-found ability to battle her way out of tough situations has brought her the Serena Slam II. It could well bring her the Grand Slam, too.
arizvi@thenational.ae
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