Serena Simply Best at Wimbledon, but She Doesn't Show It Often Enough

Quite frankly, to use her own words, Serena Williams really is the best. She said so a few months ago, when the computer dropped her from the No. 1 ranking, and then embarrassed herself a few times, even losing to a journeyman hours after her self-proclaimed greatness.

But on Saturday, she proved it. She's right. Serena beat her sister, Venus Williams, 7-6 (7-3), 6-2 to win Wimbledon.

Serena is the best.

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"It feels so amazing; I feel so blessed," she said, giddy while still on the court. "I feel like I shouldn't be holding the trophy. I'm holding it and Venus isn't. She always wins. It's like, Wow."

Then she thanked everyone in her family. And also, oddly, Nike.

It's always fun to see these athletes fresh after wins, see their honest emotions and feelings. Then, a few minutes later, she talked to an NBC-TV reporter and threw a purpose pitch:

"Nothing like working hard to get back to where I feel I belong."

And that opened up an awful lot. She feels she belongs at No. 1. She has been criticized for not working hard.

But let's start with the three basic truths of this match.

First, Serena, who has won three of the past four majors, deserves to be No. 1 again, but the computer is not only sticking with Dinara Safina, but also increasing Safina's lead. I'll get back to that later.

Second, Venus' knee is a problem. She has denied it, danced around the question of her knee wrap. Support, she said. Because of an injury?

Because it feels good. You need to feel good? It feels so good that others probably will start wearing it.

So she won't complain about her pain, but it was clear during Saturday's final that she was limping at times. The support grew bigger and bigger during the tournament. And by Saturday, her serve wasn't effective because, in my opinion, she couldn't put the pressure on her left leg, to lean hard into her swing.

Rafael Nadal missed Wimbledon with tendinitis in the knees, and I wonder if we're about to lose Venus for a while.

And the third truth is that this match was just a ceremonial thing. It served to honor the sisters' greatness, but not to show great tennis.

In fact, this match was awful, as all Williams sisters matches are.

They have played each other 21 times now, with Serena winning 11, and I can remember just one decent match.

They simply can not play well against each other. They grew up together, travel together, live to together. They love each other, and they surely have the natural sibling rivalries. It's all mixed up in there.

But they play the exact same style, too, so when they face each other, there is nothing to play off each other, no differences or contrasts.

The crowd sat quietly, politely while few points lasted longer than three shots. Both players banged away, never slicing, never mixing things up. They just swung as hard as possible and played angles. Venus couldn't run some of those angles down because of her knee and couldn't get enough on her serve. And Serena served well, particularly in the tiebreaker.

That was it.

"Today, she was too good," Venus said. "She had an answer for everything."

Too good? No.


So I'm torn. I think it's the best thing for women's tennis when the Williams sisters face each other in a major final. The game's two biggest stars, and two of only three -- also Maria Sharapova -- whose appeal have broken into the mainstream. But is it good for the game when lots of people tune in and see a poorly played, boring match?

The positives outweigh the negatives. Go with that.

"We really love Grand Slams," Serena said, having won her 11th, including three Wimbledons.

"We really love to win at every event, really, whether it's a smaller tournament or the Big Kahuna."

Oh, if that were only true.

A few weeks ago, I wrote that Serena should be bigger than Tiger Woods.

She is the best, biggest, strongest women's player ever. But she's too caught up in enjoying her celebrity, and doesn't commit to the game unless she's playing for the Big Kahuna.

Put more into the majors, fine. But at least try the rest of the time.

Imagine Serena in shape and committed. She would have everything that sells in women's tennis: talent, looks, smarts and lots and lots of victories.

Instead, she isn't even ranked No. 1. The rankings are done by computer, giving players points over a rolling 12-month period. So Serena is dominant eight weeks a year, and gets big points for majors.

And then Safina cleans up the other 44 weeks.

Now, Safina erases the points from her third-round loss at Wimbledon last year and replaces them with semifinal-loss points. Serena replaces her second-place points with first-place points.

Safina's increase is greater than Serena's for the tournament.

Women's tennis has a big problem here. Every minute Safina stays No. 1 is a humiliating minute, condemning the rankings and worse, Serena.

Safina lost to Venus in the semis 6-1, 6-0 in an embarrassing display for a champion. Tennis historians are scouring the record books to see if a No. 1 player has ever lost that bad.

So far, nothing.

And when someone asked Serena about Safina being the No. 1 player, Serena corrected that she's "ranked" No. 1.

Serena can grumble, but this is all her fault. At one point this year, she actually showed up at a tournament when she didn't want to, complaining that her appearance was tour-mandated and that she didn't want to suffer the fine because she needed the money to redecorate her house. Her own legacy suffers and women's tennis is stuck with the wrong No. 1 because Serena is letting it happen.

Come on Serena. We saw it again on Saturday. Quite frankly, you are the best. Time to make the most of that.

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