Serena Williams: game, set, match and a place in history

Does my sassiness upset you?

- Still I Rise.

When Serena Williams steps out onto Centre Court, before the royals and the sheikhs and the celebrities, it is worth considering this: she has had to tolerate more brouhaha, absorb more emotional hurt and more bullshit than any other human being in the arena.

On Thursday, Williams sent into the ether a goofy, delighted snap of her mixing it with Duchess Kate Middleton (‘I’m in the in-crowd now’) at Wimbledon. It made for a handy light entertainment viral web snack, but you sensed that for Williams herself it was more significant.

Here was a girl who grew up in Compton, Los Angeles, with only a hazy, Disney version of what Wimbledon meant; who with her sister Venus spent hours practising in front of a hostile crowd of school children paid by their coach and father Richard to stand there and catcall abuse at his daughters – including the 'N' word.

"I paid them to do it and told them to do their worst," Richard Williams would recall in his biography: he was training his girls to storm a rarefied sport that was supposed to be out of the reach of all Compton kids. So the Williams sisters practised their tennis right around the time that NWA were getting together and scribbling down F**k the Police, the protest song which presaged the stark conflict now haunting America for almost three decades. She was starting out on a life that even today, her ninth appearance at Ladies Day, reads like something dreamed up in the movie-land parts of LA.

Indian Wells

In the hours after she obliterated her semi-final opponent Elena Vesnina in just 48 minutes on Thursday, Williams was again asked about pay equality in tennis. The simplest answer she could have given as to why her victories should have the same monetary value as Roger Federer’s or Andy Murray’s is: ‘Indian Wells.’

Even now, the appalling racist treatment the Williams family suffered at that tournament in 2001 is hard to get your head around. The Williams sisters were due to meet in the semi-final but Venus’s withdrawal through injury gave her younger sister a straight path to the final.

The public view was that the withdrawal was strategic and when Serena appeared for the final, the crowd voiced its displeasure through boos and racial slurs. The Williams were practically the only black faces in a white crowd. Serena was still a teenager. Her father gave the Black Panthers salute as he took his seat. It was an unprecedented atmosphere at a modern-day sports event.

Little wonder that Williams chose to boycott Indian Wells afterwards: the shame was that her competitors didn’t follow suit. She still managed to beat Kim Clijsters in three sets, to win a title that is a footnote in a career which sees her chasing a 22nd Grand Slam title this afternoon but the environment gave her a forewarning of the fact that dominating her sport would not be plain sailing.

"Black girls must like drama, right?" Williams asks sardonically in Peter Berg's documentary Serena, screened on BBC during the week. She was referencing the various on-court squabbles with umpires down the years, protesting that she never saw herself as a controversial player.

But her mere presence has caused controversy: on the tennis circuit she has stood in stark contrast to the rest not just because of her skin colour but because the stereotypical women’s player is, as she describes it, “really tall, really thin and really lean” while she has “extra stuff” to carry with her from baseline to net. The public commentary on Williams’ physique has ranged from cheap insult to intentional ignorance, with the low moment provided by Shamil Tarpishev branding the sisters as “the Williams brothers”.

During the fallout, Serena Williams labelled the comment as “extremely sexist, racist and bullying”.

And that's the thing: Williams has always spoken her mind and has never compromised on a personality that can be spiky and defiant as well as goofy and big-hearted. Here she is accepting the Sports Illustrated award for Sports Personality of the Year less than 12 months ago: "I've had people look put me down because I don't look like them – I look strong. I've had people look past me because of the colour of my skin. I've had people overlook me because I'm a woman. I've had critics say I would never win another Grand Slam when I was at number seven – and here I stand today with 21 Grand Slam titles and I'm still going."

Fight for recognition

As a speech from an athlete at the pinnacle of world sport, it is bristling with the edge of someone who continues to fight for recognition.

And it's true that Serena Williams has never been the darling of the tennis world and has had to fight, through persistent excellence, to win the affections of mainstream America. Look at the cast of her career rivals: Jennifer Capriati, Martina Hingis, her sister Venus: she has travelled through several distinct eras in tennis. Her rivalry against Maria Sharapova, the one player whose earning potential eclipses her own, is notional: her record against the Russian is 18-2 and her 21 majors dominate Sharapova's five.

In truth, as she moves towards her mid thirties, Williams is playing against the phantom presences of Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova as she seeks to move out on her own in terms on the all-time Grand Slam honours role and claim her place as the supreme player in the history of her sport.

On Friday, the voltage of goodwill travelling around Centre Court while Roger Federer bid for another final appearance was apparent from the first serve. Everyone loves Roger for his finesse and balance and because he is perceived as the embodiment of tennis perfection: an artist using sleight-of-hand to outwit the power hitters of the world.

Serena Williams has never experienced that level of universal adoration. Why is that? Surely, in part because she continues to play through the prejudicial view that her physique gives her an advantage over her opponents. The hypocrisy is blatant. For instance, LeBron James and Williams are the pre-eminent athletes in their respective sports. But while James’s athleticism is rightly lauded, Williams has had to deal with a running commentary which seeks to undermine her femininity.

She was not the first: her heroes Arthur Ashe, Althea Gibson, Zina Garrison and her sister Venus all broke ground on the issue of race and elite tennis. But Serena Williams stands before us today as a superstar athlete of exceptional moral courage. It has been a magnificent struggle through the 18 years since her first major title. And look at her now.