![]() "The way she has looked, it doesn't look like she is going to make a miraculous comeback and win the tournament." "Emotions can only carry you so far, I don't see a Cinderella happy ending where she wins the tournament," Martina Navratilova, winner of 18 Grand Slam singles titles and the world No 1 for 332 weeks. Williams has six US Open titles, winning the first of 23 singles Grand Slam titles in 1999 but a 24th appears unlikely. However, the likelihood is this will be her last tournament as a professional player and will go down as one of the sport's greats. She headlines the opening night of the final grand slam of the season when she takes on Danka Kovinic on Arthur Ashe Stadium.Įarlier this month Williams signalled her intention to retire in a Vogue article saying she was "evolving away from tennis" but never confirming the US Open as her final event. Tonight could be Serena Williams' final match as a singles player with the American set to retire at the end of the US Open. Hello and welcome to what is guaranteed to be an emotional night in New York. The first set featured no fewer than 11 double-faults, which were almost evenly split between the two players. ![]() That meant a lot to me.”ĭid the tennis itself live up to the intensity of the occasion? Not always. “It was loud and I could feel it in my chest. “When I walked out, the reception was really overwhelming,” said Williams after the match. This was the highest figure ever recorded for a night session at the US Open, and over 5,000 more than could actually fit in Arthur Ashe Stadium. Once the handshake was done, Williams found herself smiling her way through a nicely judged tribute, hosted by CBS’s breakfast-show presenter Gayle King and featuring a recorded message from Oprah Winfrey, the queen of the sofa herself.Įven if rumours of a performance from Beyonce proved unfounded, it was still a memorable night, which saw 29,402 people flock to the Billie Jean King Tennis Centre. ![]() (For those who have been hiding under a rock, she announced her imminent retirement in a Vogue magazine article published earlier this month.) Williams responded by powering past Kovinic in straight sets – 6-3, 6-3 – and extending her farewell tour for at least another couple of days. On a euphoric, almost hysterical night in New York, the 24,000 fans on Arthur Ashe Stadium screamed their lungs out for their peerless champion, who shimmered and swaggered in a glamorous black dress embroidered with hundreds of crystals. US Open organisers had booked Williams a farewell ceremony after her first-round meeting with Danka Kovinic, but they reckoned without the great woman’s ferocious self-belief. Was this Serena Williams’s swansong? Or was it the beginning of another miraculous US Open storyline? Perhaps a bit of both.
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