Serena Williams is arguably the greatest female tennis player of all time – a seven-time Wimbledon champion and winner of an astonishing 23 Grand Slam titles in all. Even so, should she have been given a wild card to enter this year’s Wimbledon championship? No, not really: a player who has been out of competition for years should not receive a direct entry into a Grand Slam without even playing a proper warm-up tournament. It smacks of a decision based on nostalgia and a desire for cheap headlines on the part of the All England Club.
Professional tennis should not be about rewarding superstars trying to relive past glories
Wimbledon relies more than ever on marquee names to attract a global TV audience, and they don’t come much bigger than Williams. It is, however, a slap in the face for many younger, and far less famous, tennis players who slog their way through the tennis circuit in the hope of a once-in-a-lifetime wild card for Wimbledon.
Why bother when the tennis authorities would much rather give a helping hand to an ageing icon? In doing so, Wimbledon has opted for a nostalgia fest as far removed from the elite sporting standards that Williams stood for in her glory years.
Her many fans (and plenty of neutrals) will be happy enough that she has been granted a chance to shine once more on tennis’s foremost stage. They would argue that critics of her wildcard entry are missing the bigger picture: wild cards exist for extraordinary circumstances, and Williams deserves to be treated as a special case. I’m not so sure. Professional tennis should not be about rewarding superstars trying to relive past glories.
Serena first tasted singles success in Wimbledon in 2002, almost a quarter of a century ago. She won in 2003, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2015 and 2016. It is a phenomenal record and testament to her enduring brilliance.
She served an extraordinary 319 weeks as the world No. 1, breaking records at whim. She dominated the grass courts for the best part of two decades but her later years were hampered by injuries and the inevitable toll of being at the top for so long. She has not won a singles match at Wimbledon since 2019. In Wimbledon 2022, she lost in the first round to unseeded French player, Harmony Tan.
Serena today – aged 44 and four years since she last played a professional singles match – is not what she was. In her last competitive singles outing, at the 2022 US Open, she lost to Ajla Tomljanovic in the third round. It is not unfair on Tomljanovic to suggest that prime Serena would have swept her aside.
At the time, she said she didn’t want to use the word “retiring” and instead declared that she was “evolving” away from tennis. If only she had resisted the temptation to return to the game and stayed “evolving”.
Even now, after so long away, she probably has the tennis know-how and muscle memory to win a few matches, but she is not a serious contender to win the tournament. How could she be? Williams could well suffer a brutal humiliation at the hands of the first decent player she meets. What an embarrassing prospect that is. It’s unworthy of one of the tennis greats of any era.
Why is the great Serena sullying her sporting record by taking this one last journey down memory lane? Is is really worth it?
Williams has been open enough about her goal in returning to competitive tennis. She wants her two daughters, Olympia and Adira, to see her compete. It is a sweet and perfectly understandable desire but that doesn’t mean that Wimbledon should be indulging it.
The All England Club is guilty of devaluing its own elite standards by being party to this sporting vanity exercise. It amounts to a publicity stunt unworthy of a great championship.
It also says something – and nothing good – about the present state of women’s tennis that a returning Williams overshadows everyone else. She remains a bigger draw than many of those who have come after her.
The great American has never been one to shirk a challenge but Wimbledon should have spared her. Tennis fans deserve to remember her glory years, not this twilight period of defying age and the failings of the body. Both Wimbledon and Williams may come to regret her appearance in SW19.
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