An Act of Serena

Angelique Kerber watched as the ball skidded off the sideline, flew past her, and landed with a thud against the green tarp at the back of Centre Court. Then she rolled her eyes at the sky and threw her right hand up in exasperation.

This is the type of gesture that tennis players make when a ball takes a bad bounce, or hits the top of the net and falls on their side of the court, or gets blown off course by the wind. It’s a gesture of futility, a protest against fate, a hopeless objection aimed at a higher power that they know they can’t control or change. Which is why Kerber’s stare up at the sky made perfect sense. She wasn’t protesting an act of god, exactly. She was protesting the closest thing that tennis has to it at the moment: The Serena Williams serve.

In this case that serve had just wiped away—in the time it takes a ball traveling 115 M.P.H. to cross a net—the only break point that Kerber would have all day. The score was 3-3 in the second set, and the German had worked for more than an hour, and through nine of Williams’ service games, to put herself in this position.

While she had lost the first set, Kerber had played some excellent and characteristically stubborn tennis. She had moved Serena around the court with her forehand, and kept the world No. 1 at bay on the baseline. At 2-3, Kerber had held serve by winning a long, frantic, crowd-pleasing rally, in which both women had criss-crossed the court more than once. When Serena double faulted early in the next game, it looked like the match was about to swing in Kerber’s direction. That is, until Serena swung it back in her direction with that ace on the sideline.

According to her, it really was an Act of Serena; she needed a perfect serve, so she hit it.

“Today I knew, with the conditions, it would be better if I served great because it was really windy out there,” Serena said matter-of-factly. “Once I got down break point, I knew that it was her first break point, and I wasn’t going to let it go on the very first one at least. So I wanted to hit an ace.”

When it comes to Serena’s serve, are there any new praises left to sing? By now we can recite the words that John McEnroe used to describe the shot after the final: “It’s the biggest weapon in the history of the sport.” Even more remarkable is the fact that, unlike the most effective men’s serves—Ivo Karlovic’s and John Isner’s—Serena’s isn’t the product of height (Isner and Karlovic are 6’9" and 6’10", respectively; she’s listed at 5’9” and may be an inch taller). It’s the product of athleticism, technique, and strength of will.

But it has rarely, if ever, been more important—more buoying for her, more demoralizing for her opponent—than it was in her 7-5, 6-3 win over Kerber on Saturday. Serena hit 13 aces and won 88 percent of points on her first serve. When she missed her first one and had to a second ball, that percentage dropped all the way to 39 percent. By comparison, Kerber won 59 percent of points on her own first serve, and 68 percent on her second. Once she got into a rally, Kerber, who made just nine unforced errors, was holding her own. Hence her frustration when Serena didn’t let her get in a rally.

Serena had obviously learned from her loss to Kerber in the Australian Open final earlier this year. In that match, the German had used her crosscourt forehand pass to deadly effect; this time, Serena moved over early to cut it off. But as she admitted, Serena was tight early on, and she was the bothered by the wind, which played havoc with her backhand in the first set.

Afterward, Kerber was asked what the difference was between this match and their Aussie Open final.

“Today, just her serve was much better,” Kerber said. “On grass, the serve is also a little bit strange, because it’s tough to return it.”

“I had one break point and I couldn’t do nothing.”

Kerber said she “tried everything,” and much of the time it was enough. At the end of each set, though, she suddenly threw in a series of unforced errors and was broken. Whether it was frustration or resignation or nerves, Kerber lost patience and pulled the trigger too early.

“I was trying to be tough,” she said, “trying to fight until the last point.”

For the 22nd time at a Grand Slam, the last point belonged to Serena. That ties her with Steffi Graf for second on the all-time list, only behind Margaret Court’s 24. Serena said it was a “relief” to get there on her fourth try, as it had been when she tied Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova at 18 majors, which also came on her fourth attempt. According to Serena, the key this time was, as the saying goes, not to let the perfect be the enemy of the (very) good.

“I’ve definitely had some sleepless nights,” Serena said of her near-misses at the last three Slams. “I had to start focusing on the positives and not focusing on that one loss per tournament, which really isn’t bad.

“Once I started focusing on the positives,” she said with a smile, “I realized, I’m pretty good.”

Of her loss to Roberta Vinci at the U.S. Open last year, she said she wanted to show that, “No, that’s not going to shake me, you’re not going to break me.”

The Vinci loss had kept Serena from a calendar-year Grand Slam in 2015, tennis’ version of perfection. At the same time, it made her realize, as she said today, “you can’t win everything” and “I’m not going to be perfect.”

And that’s how Serena played three of her last four matches at Wimbledon. Against Svetlana Kuznetsova, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Kerber, Serena absorbed their best shots, accepted that she wasn’t going to blow them off the court, and trusted that she had the game to win in the end. She was right: She didn’t drop a set to any of them.

Today, after saying that Serena’s serve is the greatest weapon in tennis history, McEnroe speculated that her will to win may be a close second. You could see that will in action at 4-3 in the second set. Serena walked to the sideline with a look of tunnel-vision determination; it was, in her mind, winning time—her time. I thought Kerber’s day was over, and maybe Kerber herself did as well.

There has been talk in recent years that Serena is playing in an era of weak competition. And it’s true that she stands head and shoulders, game-wise, above her peers, as she has for most of her career. But that fact brings its own challenges for a top player. The pressure of being expected to win every time you play can be more difficult to deal with than any opponent. Every match for Serena is a battle not just with the other player, but with the knowledge that the result resides squarely on her racquet. Serena found a way to deal with that knowledge at Wimbledon, by not expecting the impossible from herself.

When she walked off the court at 4-3 in the second set, Serena had conquered her own doubts. She had succeeded in this situation so many times in the past that there was no need to worry about failure anymore. Now all she needed to do was conquer Kerber. For that, Serena had the perfect weapon. In the final game, she moved quickly from one point to the next. Three times she fired a first serve, three times Kerber failed to return it. All that was left for her to do was put one more simple forehand volley into the court. It was the simplest, and happiest, act of Serena of all.