Across the last two weeks of December, Baseline will dish out awards for the greatest acts of 2018.
If there’s one thing you can say about Serena Williams it’s that the star’s accomplishments transcend the tennis world and gain worldwide notice.
A career of pulling off the unthinkable will do that.
So when the 23-time Grand Slam winner decided to return to the game after starting a family, it wasn’t a matter of if she could make a comeback, but how monumental the return would be.
As it turns out, she surpassed nearly everyone’s expectations, except perhaps her own.
Dipping her toes into the competitive waters, Williams played an exhibition match against Jelena Ostapenko near the beginning of the year. She chose not to defend her title at the Australian Open, instead making her official debut in Fed Cup against the Netherlands, where she and her older sister Venus dropped their doubles rubber.
Her singles campaign kicked off in Indian Wells, where she fell to Venus, and then, she dropped her opening match to Naomi Osaka at the Miami Open.
Choosing not to play any clay-court events before the French Open, Williams showed up for Paris ready to subdue any opponents that crossed her path in a super-heroic endeavor that carried her through to the fourth round.
Forced to withdraw from the tournament due to injury, Williams next returned at Wimbledon, where she was seeded 25th based on her past merits, despite her ranking of 181. It wasn’t until the quarterfinals that she dropped a set, and she ended up falling to Angelique Kerber in a rematch of the 2016 finals.