Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Second rate reporter says what?

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Best of the Best Open Thread: Queen Serena

Best of the Best Open Thread: Queen Serena

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The greatest female athlete of all time—check that: perhaps the greatest athlete of all time—has been thinking a lot about the reason she’s vowed to hang up her racket for good.

“Olympia doesn’t like when I play tennis,” Serena Williams says plainly about her daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr. When Williams told Olympia, who turns 5 on Sept. 1, that she was soon to be done with the life that made her an inspiration to millions, Olympia’s reply was as joyful as her mother’s celebrations after so many Grand Slam wins: a fist-pumping “Yes!”

“That kind of makes me sad,” says Williams, leaning forward in her chair in the library of a New York City hotel. “And brings anxiety to my heart.” No kid understands their parent’s absence. But Williams has spent the last few years of her incomparable career tormented by what she’s been sacrificing in order to keep going. “It’s hard to completely commit,” says Williams, “when your flesh and blood is saying, Aw.”…

Greatness is something she knows well. No tennis player, male or female, has won more major championships in the Open Era—the period starting in 1968 when the Grand Slam tournaments allowed professionals—than Serena Williams. (Australia’s Margaret Court owns the all-time record, with 24 Grand Slams.) Williams earned 10 of those 23 titles after the age of 30, a time when most players retire or plummet in the rankings. But for all that Williams accomplished on the court, it’s what she has meant off the court that makes her the most consequential athlete of the 21st century, full stop. She, along with older sister Venus, took over a country-club sport with resistance to a pair of Black sisters from Compton, Calif., baked into its DNA. She helped change behavioral expectations for female athletes, and by extension women in all workplaces, by exuding power and passion—and bringing her full self—to her hard-court office. She rewrote the book on body image. When pundits, racists, and no small number of idiots slurred her physical appearance or laughed her off as “masculine,” she doubled down on photo shoots and flexes…

“I don’t know any other person that has won a Grand Slam or a championship in the NBA or anything else nine weeks pregnant,” she says. She laughs, a habit when she wants to make a serious point. “A two-week event. That tournament, I relied on my brain. An athlete isn’t just about what an animal you are physically, like a specimen. It’s using everything. Your mind, your body, everything. And doing that for 20 years. And doing it against people that come against you and play the best game of their life. Every single time.”…

… Williams is a talisman for many Black women because the only lines she ever stayed within were on a tennis court. Even her presence there, at the time of her and her sister Venus’s debuts in the late 1990s, was radical, more than 40 years after Althea Gibson became the first Black player to win a Grand Slam title.

Williams made the critics of her body, her fashion and her career choices look foolish because of her success: 23 Grand Slam trophies, a record in the Open era, and a record $94 million in career earnings. She and sister Venus opened a pipeline of diversity in tennis, making a once-hostile environment more hospitable. She endured racism, reached the mountaintop anyway, then planted herself there, breathing easy in the thin air.

“Serena’s iconic to Black women,” said Dawn Staley, the legendary college basketball coach at South Carolina. “She’s doing it her way, and there’s no more comfortable way of doing it. We all want that. We all want to be in a space in our professions where we’re able to be us. Because everybody ain’t able. And every Black woman certainly isn’t able.”…

… She and her sister Venus changed the game, and the approach to life of many – whether they had been dreaming of a pro tennis career or simply a better, fairer future for themselves and their family.

Be yourself, was the message. Women, especially those of colour, do not need to hide their emotions or a desperate will to succeed. Many noses were put out of joint in the process, but corrective surgery had been long overdue.

Muhammad Ali and perhaps Billie Jean King aside, has any athlete made a greater impact on society than Serena Williams? And she may be only just beginning…

No-one else has been able to keep collecting Grand Slam singles titles over an 18 year period. Twice, 12 years apart, Williams won all four in a row. The first ‘Serena Slam’ was completed at the Australian Open of 2003 and secured over four consecutive finals against Venus. The sister, who in Serena’s words was “taller, prettier, quicker and more athletic”. The sister, who had inspired the glowing newspaper articles and was originally the main focus of their father Richard. The sister, whose bed she sometimes had to share as a child but from whom she learnt so much and gained so much of her drive…

Williams also possesses arguably the greatest serve of all time. It offers power, placement, rhythm and accuracy, and is harder to read than War and Peace…

A kkklassic:

And a much happier memory / brag, from a sportswriter:

Reader Interactions

51Comments

  6. 6.

    Jay

    On his Telegram, Kremlin chief propagandist, Soloviev, called for the execution of Russian commanders who allowed the counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Kharkiv region 🤷‍♀️ https://t.co/QYjiaPfId3— Olga Lautman 🇺🇦 (@OlgaNYC1211) September 11, 2022

    I used to be quite fit like, but even at my best, I doubt I could even tie Serena’s shoes anywhere near as well.

  7. 7.

    JPL

    @Geminid: hah I bowed out of that debate.  I love Al.

    btw Warnock has a new ad about reaching across the aisle which is great.  Now I wish he’d have an ad about Walker being Mitch’s and trump’s yes man.   Maga’s down here would not like that.  They do hate Mitch.

  12. 12.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: Me!

    An old friend used to say that he would rather drill holes in metal than play cards or board games.

    I would rather drill holes in metal than read / engage in another discussion about how the Al Franken thing played out.

  19. 19.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Jay:

    @Yutsano:

    Sounds almost like a joking reference to the Nazis who fled to South America after WW2.

    Then again, maybe they’re planning to flee some other way? I doubt they would try to use their jets. One of the subtweets mentions internal discussions between the pilots and their families to escape prosecution of possible war crimes they participated in

  23. 23.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Baud: One of the best things about Billie Jean King and Serena is that you never see them running to defend male players, coaches, commentators etc., who have been accused of shitty behavior towards women (and there are several)…

  28. 28.

    Jay

    @Baud:

    Shooters Earplugs.

    With the pin pulled, knocks down everything above 80db, but allows you to hear normal voice speech. Plugs in, as good as you can get.

    Hot today, and the entire Fraser Valley is filled with smoke from a wildfire in Manning Park, another near Hope, and of course, a massive pile of scrap wood in a salvage yard near Musqueam that caught fire yesterday and is still smoldering.

  29. 29.

    Omnes Omnibus

    In law school, I occasionally played tennis against a classmate who had played Div 1 women’s tennis. She played right handed (she was a lefty) to make it fair. I took a few points off her, but never a game. Against a pro, let alone Serena, no fucking way.

  30. 30.

    UncleEbeneezer

    It’s going to be very interesting to see what happens to the GOAT narrative for Serena (which I agree with) when Nadal and/or Djokovic reach/surpass 23 majors, which will likely happen soon (Rafa has 22, Nole has 21).  For all the records, the total number of Slams has been the most obvious one to point to, to quickly and emphatically award her GOAT status.  I think Serena will always be the GOAT because she is important in a way that neither Nadal or Djokovic will ever be (because she did everything with the added burden of racism and misogyny on her back), but it will be interesting nonetheless to see how the arguments for her as GOAT change if/when 23 Majors is matched by two other players in the Open Era.

  32. 32.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: There are lots of great jokes out there re the war.

    I can’t find it at the moment, but…

    ===

    VVP at his bowling-alley-length table asking the generals at the other end: Tell me in one word how the war is going.

    Generals: Good!

    VVP: Ok, now tell me in two words how the war is going.

    Generals:  Not Good!

    ===

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  33. 33.

    Matt McIrvin

    Perhaps if I had the serve and, in that precise instant, Serena Williams was struck by a meteorite, I could take that point.

  35. 35.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @Another Scott:  found on Reddit

    Putin dies and goes to hell, but after a while, he is given a day off for good behavior.

    So he goes to Moscow, enters a bar, orders a drink, and asks the bartender:

    -Is Crimea ours?

    -Yes, it is.

    -And the Donbas?

    -Also ours.

    -And Kyiv?

    -We got that too.

    Satisfied, Putin drinks, and asks:

    -Thanks, how much do I owe you?

    -5 euros.

  36. 36.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Mr. Bemused Senior:

    Oh okay, my mistake. The MBC meme comes from when Antonio Brown, former NFL wide receiver declared himself “Mr. Big Chest/Checks” a few years back.

    The internet took to make as many MBC combinations as possible to mock Brown for being an idiot, e.g. Mr. Big Crybaby

  39. 39.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Omnes Omnibus: I got to hit with a kid who is currently playing on the pro circuit.  I was able to win some rallies here and there but would probably struggle to even take a game off him if we played for real.  I’m a 4.5-5.0 (on a good day).  Pros are just at a whole other level.  Players like Serena are basically playing a different sport than I am.

  43. 43.

    West of the Rockies

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    The speed of high-ranking athletes is stunning.  I played a bit of league and pickup basketball.  Playing the first time against a minor school D1 player was HUMBLING.  He was in front of me.  And then he wasn’t. I turned around in time to watch him dunk.

    I played on my  high school tennis team briefly.   On my best day I’d have not likely even made contact with a Serena serve.

  46. 46.

    Patricia Kayden

    I’m going to miss Serena. She was a joy to watch. Very proud of her accomplishments as a Black woman in a White-dominated sport. She rocked.

  48. 48.

    pajaro

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    I just finished watching the Alcaraz-Ruud US Open Final.  After this match Alcaraz, who is 19, will be the world number 1, and Ruud, who’s 24, will the number 2.  Nadal lost his round of 16 match this year to Frances Tiafoe, a 24 year-old American.  I think the two remaining geezers may have a tough time, at long last, keeping the kids out.

  49. 49.

    J R in WV

    @Baud:

    I could be your cheif (sic) propagandist. How much does it pay? Do I have to tell the truth? Never mind…

    Baud 2028 !!! Just send him the bill ~!!~

  50. 50.

    J R in WV

    I’m an elderly white guy from southern West Virginia. I have the highest possible regard for Serena and Venus Williams. They are high class in every sense of the word. I have never played tennis (well, maybe once or twice, racket-ball was more my racket sport, at which I also really suck) but they surpass excellence. esp Serena.

  51. 51.

    Paul in KY

    I think Babe Didrikson was probably a bit better (as greatest women athlete). She might have had that chromosomal thing that had the S. African lady banned from some of the shorter track events, though.

    Serena is the GOAT of women’s tennis.

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