Remember the 2009 women’s semifinal at the U.S. Open, when Serena Williams played Kim Clijsters? Williams lost the first set, and then, trailing 5–6 in the second, and down 15–30, she was called for a foot fault on a second serve, making the score 15–40. She threatened to shove a tennis ball down “the fucking throat” of the line judge who made the questionable call, and was penalized a point for that, losing the game and thus, incredibly, the match as well. It was the story of that rain-drenched Open.
But there was a remarkable story on the other side of the net, too. Clijsters had only recently rejoined the women’s tour after two years away. She’d played an exhibition, and then decided, with a what-the-heck shrug, to get back to competing for real. She’d gained entry into the Open only by way of a wild card. She had retired from the game to have and care for a baby. She would go on to win the title at that Open, defeating Caroline Wozniacki. Her cherubic daughter, Jada, toddled onto the court to be held by her mom, who was also managing to hold a large trophy. “We had planned Jada’s nap time for later than usual so that she could be here tonight,” Clijsters said during her on-court interview.
Watching it all, it seemed . . . impossible. Only two other women in the Open era had won majors after having children: the great Australian Aboriginal player Evonne Goolagong won Wimbledon, in 1980, seven years after another Australian, Margaret Court, won three majors as a new mom. That was it. It’s just too hard on the body, and too demanding of both time and focus, to raise an infant and to raise your game to a Grand Slam-winning level at the same time. For most people, at least. “Surreal” is how Clijsters described it later, at her post-match press conference, when asked to explain her victory. “It wasn’t in the plans.”
I found myself thinking of Clijsters on Thursday night, as Williams played her first match back on the women’s tour in more than thirteen months. She’s a new mom herself now, of course, having given birth to a daughter, Alexis Olympia, in September. For her, though, winning majors is in the plans: she has made no secret of the fact that she has returned to do exactly that. She is one shy of Court’s record of twenty-four Grand Slam victories. Court won most of hers under less competitive circumstances, before the Open era began, in 1968, allowing professionals to compete in the majors, and you would have to search long and hard to find someone who’d say that Williams is not the greater of the two players, or the greatest women’s player ever, for that matter. But that is not enough for Williams. It’s not at all clear that twenty-four majors would be enough.
Nor is it clear, at this point, if and when she will be playing at a level necessary to win a major again, or even a big tournament like the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, where, on Thursday, unseeded after her maternity leave, she played her much-anticipated return match. The main Court 1 Stadium at Indian Wells was packed, as it rarely is for a first-round match. Fans were excited to have Serena back. That is not the same as an exciting match, or even a well-played one. Williams was rusty, of course, her lateral movement sluggish, and now and then she mis-measured her small adjustment steps, leaving her lunging for the ball. If she’d faced a tougher opponent—someone like, for instance, Japan’s emerging young star Naomi Osaka, who defeated Maria Sharapova in their first-round match Wednesday night—Williams might not have made it to round two. But she is moving on, after a 7–5, 6–3 win, thanks in no small part to her opponent, Zarina Diyas, a twenty-four-year-old Kazakh who is currently ranked No. 53 in the world. Diyas has no go-to shot, hits with neither depth nor pace, does not construct points, and has a second serve that would be a liability if she played for a small liberal-arts college. In the middle of the first set, as the players sat before changing ends, her coach, Roberto Antonini, came on the court and pleaded with Diyas to “play side to side” and “keep moving” Williams around—he could see that Williams was breathing heavily, perhaps tiring. Diyas did hit a few failed drop shots in the second set, but mostly continued to hit everything down the middle, hoping to extend rallies in which Williams would eventually make an unforced error. And Williams did make unforced errors: I counted twenty-seven of them over the course of the match. But Diyas made lots of errors, too, especially on big points, and she tallied nowhere near as many winners as Williams, who had more than thirty.
Williams, dressed for the evening in matador black, did have stretches where she served hard and accurately. She has long possessed one of the purest service motions in tennis, and she has not lost it. She also set up inside the baseline on more than a few of Diyas’s patty-caked second serves to the deuce court and crushed forehand return winners crosscourt: vintage Serena. But she did none of this under sustained pressure. Nor was her endurance tested. It is simply too early to know when, or if, she will again be in a position to capture a major.
It is worth mentioning that Clijsters was in her mid-twenties when she won the U.S. Open as a new mom. Goolagong and Court, too, were in their twenties when they came back from their maternity leaves to win majors. Williams is thirty-six, and not yet fully recovered from the pulmonary embolism that left her bedridden for weeks after giving birth. She has, she’s said, lost core strength, which is crucial for tennis. Can she find the time and summon the will to rebuild it? And how much rebuilding can be done by a player entering her late thirties? For Williams, winning another Grand Slam is not out of the question. It happening would just have you shaking your head. Impossible.
If not Serena, then maybe Victoria Azarenka. She’s twenty-eight and has won two majors. In December, 2016, she had a baby boy, Leo, with her boyfriend, Billy McKeague, a resort golf pro. The couple split up last summer, and have been embroiled in a custody fight ever since. As a result, Azarenka was not permitted to travel with the child, forcing her to withdraw from last year’s U.S. Open and forego tour tennis last fall. It was reported that she won custody of the boy in January. Hours after Williams won her first match back, Azarenka, on the very same court, won hers, against Britain’s Heather Watson, in straight sets. Williams and Azarenka are rivals of a sort, but friendly ones. They talk together now of feeding schedules, bedtimes, and future playdates. It’s a long shot, if not quite surreal, but they could meet, for the twenty-second time, in the semifinals.
