Serena Williams is the BEST after US Open third-round defeat ended career

It feels appropriate, first, to say thank you.

Not just for last night, although nobody sat in the Arthur Ashe Stadium will ever forget it. 

Not even for a final game in which the sweat, resilience and determination of a lifetime seemed encapsulated. There should be wider gratitude. Not just for the career but the multitudes it contained. The genius. The inspiration. 

The good and, yes, the flaws. Some very human flaws, all of which are forgiven when a truly great person leaves the stage. We only remember the best. And Serena Williams was the very, very best.

The greatest of all time? Undoubtedly. Margaret Court has more Grand Slams but not in the open era and weighted very much to her home tournament in Australia at a time when travel was not as straightforward as now. 

As for the best of the men, not one has had the influence and the sheer game-changing capacity of Williams. 

She rendered a generation of rivals obsolete, she altered the way future generations would approach the sport; and it was all laid out before a whooping, awestruck crowd at Flushing Meadows last night.

This was the longest match of Williams’ US Open career and, even in defeat, it could be argued she saved some of the very best for last. 

Not because this was her finest tennis. How could it be, losing to Ajla Tomljanovic, who will enter the fourth round of this tournament for the first time at 29? Yet in the way she carried herself, the way she fought, Williams didn’t turn up for a valedictory, a last wave to the crowd, a final look around the place. 

The 23-time Grand Slam winner was beaten in three sets by Australian Ajla Tomljanovic

She went out like a true champion, on her shield, bitterly refusing to concede defeat across three sets that lasted over three hours.

In the second round tie-break, she was a set down and serving with the scores tied 4-4. Lose that point, and Tomljanovic would then have two serves to end the match and Williams’ career. 

It could have been her last serve as a professional tennis player, after 27 years. Williams sent down an ace, 117 mph, right on the T. 

She then broke the younger woman twice to take the match to a third instalment. And that was the portent. That was the sign of what was to come, even when Tomljanovic stunned a raucous, homer crowd into confused silence, racing to a 5-1 lead and serving for the match. 

Asked how she held it together at that point the Australian replied that she never expected to win. Not at the start, not even at 5-1 in the third. ‘She’s Serena,’ Tomljanovic said. ‘She’s the greatest of all time. She’s not down. Even at 5-1 I didn’t think the pressure was on me.’

She went out like a true champion, on her shield, bitterly refusing to concede defeat

False modesty? Well, put it like this. Here’s how the final game of Williams’ career went and you judge whether Williams was a spent force. 

Tomljanovic’s score first, obviously. 15-0; 15-15; 15-30; 30-30; 40-30; deuce; advantage Tomljanovic; deuce; advantage Tomljanovic; deuce; advantage Tomljanovic; deuce; advantage Williams; deuce; advantage Tomljanovic; deuce; advantage Williams; deuce; advantage Williams; deuce; advantage Tomljanovic. And breathe. 

So there’s game points, and set points, and match points, but Williams somehow came through five retirement points – although she hates that word, so let’s call them evolution points – before succumbing. 

It was a tame forehand into the net but that’s barely irrelevant. Has any champion gone out raging quite so determinedly against the dying of the light. 

At the end, the emotion of the moment overwhelmed – Williams thanked her parents

Here is a woman who turns 41 this month, who had barely played in the year before this tournament, who has set her sights on motherhood and a life away from competition, and this is how she says goodbye? 

Her fans would still have loved her had she flopped out in round one. By her own admission she has no-one to impress, nothing left to prove, and yet she left nothing on Arthur Ashe court but her sweat and, later, her tears. 

At the end, the emotion of the moment overwhelmed. Williams thanked her parents, her sister Venus, and the rest of her family and supporters, through floods. Later, talking through her evolution once more, the composure had returned. ‘These are happy tears,’ she insisted. ‘I guess.’

She’s enjoying teasing the more gullible members of her audience – ‘I always did love Australia, though,’ she said, and even nailed the accent – but this seems final. 

If Williams has a regret it is that she could have done more, gone deeper, had a better ending. 

‘What makes it harder is I was just getting better with each round,’ she said. ‘So if I had started sooner, played more…’ She left it hanging. 

Williams last Major win was at Australian Open in 2017 as she chased Margaret Court’s record

Who knows what she might have been capable of, had circumstance not intervened. She had a difficult pregnancy, injuries, Covid took life and time out of the game.

Everyone knows she coveted Margaret Court’s 24 slams. Then there could be no debates. The case for Williams, though, is overwhelming; the case for Court needs a slavish bowing to one statistic. Williams was halted on 23. Yet nobody on Ashe last night was in any doubt they were watching the Greatest Of All Time.

And now a word on Tomljanovic: fabulous. For much of this first week it was possible to imagine nobody would overcome the doubles partnership of Serena Williams and a home crowd. 

The atmosphere around her matches has been ferocious, borderline unsporting, with cheers and applause greeting the double faults of her opponents. Then there is the video montage that greets Williams’ appearance, with the other player treated like a challenger, made to sit and watch and listen to her achievements before the champion takes the stage. 

 At her best, far removed from serenity, Williams played with a fury like no player before

Tomljanovic noticeably kept her headphones on to shut out the noise and tributes, and touched the plaque with the quote from Billie Jean King – pressure is a privilege – as she entered. 

At one stage, when encouragement for Williams and catcalls greeting the top of her serve, she looked as if she was about to take on the crowd, and was booed. That would have been an error. She, wisely, stepped back. It wasn’t the only time in the night she got her tactics spot on.

‘I just thought she would beat me,’ said Tomljanovic. ‘ I knew if I didn’t concentrate for two seconds…’

Williams, meanwhile, was struggling to sum up three decades of sheer brilliance in a helpful soundbite. 

Nobody on Ashe last night was in any doubt they were watching the Greatest Of All Time

‘I didn’t smash any rackets, I had a good attitude even when I didn’t want to,’ she smiled, when asked for her positives from the tournament. She was required to be more specific about career highlights. 

‘The French Open 2015,’ she decided. ‘That’s the one I’ll be taking with me. I almost died and somehow I won.’ Williams had been so ill in the 48 hours before the final she didn’t think she would be able to play. She beat Lucie Safarova, over three sets.

More generally, Williams cited her fight, her passion, her crazy intensity. 

Anyone who has witnessed this run will second that. Nobody buries a smash like Williams, nobody berates a ball. Never has a person been so ironically named. At her best, far removed from serenity, Williams played with a fury like no player before. 

She was attacking to the last in New York, even as the end stared her in the face. 

At the conclusion the organisers indulged an old cliche, Simply The Best filling the arena as Williams soaked up the adulation. Sport needs more original material. But better than all the rest? Nobody was arguing with that.