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Serena Williams reacts at the 2014 US Open.
Is it weird that I associate the Fourth of July, that most American of holidays, with a sporting event renowned for its very Britishness?
As a kid I played tennis, and had visions of becoming the U.S. version of Bjorn Borg. Back then, in the early 1980s, the Wimbledon Championships began earlier, and the men’s finals frequently fell on Independence Day. I preferred watching Borg vs. John McEnroe from the comfort of my parents’ home in Plover, Wis., than hanging around outside as mosquitoes mauled me.
Much of the attention at this year’s Wimbledon, which begins Monday, is focused on Serena Williams, an athlete nearly as polarizing as McEnroe was back in the day. Since her appearance on the U.S. tennis scene in 1997 at age 15, Williams has won 20 Grand Slam events (the sport’s most important annual tournaments: the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open).
Winning all four events also is called a Grand Slam, and doing so over the course of a playing career isn’t easy. But it’s certainly more common than winning a calendar-year Grand Slam. Only two men (Don Budge and Rod Laver) and three women (Steffi Graf, Maureen Connolly Brinker and the perfectly named Margaret Court) have done so.
Williams is halfway there, with resounding victories in Australia and France earlier this year. If she prevails on the prestigious grass of the All-England Club and then the blue acrylic hardcourts at September’s U.S. Open in New York, Williams will become the first tennis player to complete a calendar-year Grand Slam since Graf in 1988.
But upsets are in vogue in professional tennis this year. A few weeks ago, Switzerland’s Stan Wawrinka pulled off a 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4 stunner in the French Open final over Novak Djokovic, the number-one player in the world, who was seeking his first career Grand Slam in Paris.
And at the Australian Open in January, Italian Andreas Seppi knocked off the second-best player in the world, Switzerland’s Roger Federer, in the third round.
Williams herself narrowly eked out victories in the third and fourth rounds of the French Open, coming from behind in both matches. She could feel more vulnerable in London than she has in a long time.
