In the Arena: Serena Williams isn’t really about tennis – it’s about the solitude suffered by the elite athlete

If all this sounds hard enough already, throw in being a woman, who is black, from Compton, Los Angeles, famous for its music and infamous for its history of gangs and guns, and eight episodes becomes only just enough to document the rollercoaster fortunes of the finest female player of this, or perhaps any, century with 23 grand slam titles to her name. One who has overcome abuse for her skin colour, her body type, her temperament, and her biggest emotional hurdle – beating her own sister Venus.

The statistics are impressive, but it wasn’t just what she did, it was the way she did it. In 2001, as a 19-year-old in one of her first finals, at Indian Wells in her home state, Williams was booed by the entire stadium because her sister had withdrawn from their semi-final the previous day. Williams won, but was so traumatised she stayed away for 14 years. In 2015, she won the French Open with a head cold so bad she was nearly asleep. In 2017, she won the Australian Open aged 35, without dropping a set the whole fortnight, days after she’d discovered she was expecting her first child. This is the stuff of classical Greek myth, so why isn’t she universally loved and admired?

It’s educational to watch fellow tennis great Martina Navratilova chatting to Amol Rajan for one of his sit-down interviews. Twenty years before commentators were suggesting that “the Williams sisters’ ability to overpower other women was hurting the game”, Navratilova was the darling of women’s tennis. She received courtside ovations first for her courage in leaving behind communist Czechoslovakia as a teenager and then for coming out as gay in 1981.

But then she improved her fitness and, as she tells Rajan, “I started winning and that became a problem.” Navratilova laments that women are still judged by a different metric from men: “They say, ‘You’re so competitive.’ Am I supposed to go on the court and try to lose? Would they say that to Rafa Nadal?” It’s as though in the recesses of many fans’ psyches, women should still be playing tennis in broderie anglaise petticoats between sips of tea from china cups.

So which female players do people like? You mean apart from Anna Kournikova, who made a reported $10 million through endorsements despite never winning one WTA singles title? Go figure. But a glance at the list of recent number one ranked women players is revealing. Maria Sharapova was as talented as she was glamorous, but I do wonder if Williams would have received the same rapturous welcome back to the sport after a drugs ban. Chris Evert and Steffi Graf both combined grace with athleticism, their popularity compounded by romances with equally popular male players – Evert once engaged to Connors, Graf married to Andre Agassi.

I guess we have to accept televised sport is as much entertainment and fantasy as it is competition, with its requisite heroes, heroines and villains. In that narrative, Williams achieved her fairy-tale ending, bowing out at the 2018 US Open, cheered to the rafters as an old player, a new mum. Meanwhile, her young rival Naomi Osaka was booed for beating her. Williams was supportive but there was nothing she could do. The big red X had found a new back.

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