I am an optimist. Until the last ball is struck, I always cling to the possibility of a comeback. But 2016 has tested my resolve. I cannot sidestep the fact that this year suggests the end of two eras that are inexorably linked in my mind.
My Obama years, now tragically terminated, were/still are my Serena Williams years—eight years that have brought me to my feet, wildly cheering in my living room, unable to believe the magnitude of what I was witnessing, and that reduced me to tears, head in my hands in shock and disbelief. I am a former professional athlete, so forgive me for conflating the sports world with the political one. But in this instance I see them together and they tell me something.
2008, the year hope came to stand for the possibility of an Obama presidency, was also the year Serena rose from the ashes of her own career, giving the lie to all those cruel—and I do mean cruel—rumors that she lacked the dedication, the enthusiasm, or the focus for professional tennis. That’s the thing about Serena: People, including some professional commentators, have always felt free to be cruel, as if the way she looks and acts gives them license to ignore her greatness.
I identified with Serena the first time I saw her play as an exuberant 16-year-old in her white Reebok tennis dress, the clacking beads in her hair setting off so much mean-spirited nonsense. (I loved and love Venus, too, but there was something unrestrained about Serena that spoke to me, something powerful and volatile, exciting, edgy, and unpredictable.) In my own modest way, I was a successful athlete who took my share of abuse for reasons having little to do with my talent, so when I saw this gifted phenom being criticized for things that were irrelevant to her sport, I sensed something disturbing at work. How could a body be “too powerful”? How did her vibrant outfits (which were, in my opinion, one of the most exciting things to happen to tennis) make her any less serious? Any less good? How could standing out in a sea of stony-eyed Russian stars and sunbaked American sweethearts be a bad thing?
Sure, we all have our favorites and our champions, and I’m okay if you prefer Lindsay Davenport or Justine Henin, even Maria Sharapova. But what people, sadly some of my friends included, said about Serena went well beyond conventional sports allegiance into the unacknowledged precincts of, let’s admit it, racism…how dare she?
There was something else beyond Serena’s talent, her style, and her swagger that drew me to her: her mental struggle.
Each time she took the court, even on one of her many magical days, the psychological battle she waged with herself was visible—something I’d never seen so vividly displayed on an athlete of her caliber. I’ve watched epic meltdowns and historic chokes, but never before had an athlete let the fans see the difficulty of mastering her emotions, of fighting back fear, panic, and frustration. Never had an athlete so clearly demonstrated the anguish that it often takes to win each and every point.
It was fascinating—raw and real. Sadly, this was a battle that Serena often lost, defeating herself more often than she was defeated by others. And when, after a brilliant, exciting period of dominance in her early 20s, she began to “decline,” as the press put it, and her ranking plummeted, I feared she would never return, and that her inner demons had won. Then, in 2008, when the market was collapsing and Obama was surging, her return to the WTA Tour began to seem real, and yes, there was hope.
In 2009, a few weeks before our first African-American president was sworn into office, Serena Williams once again became the No. 1 player in the world. This new Serena was a better, flashier, more profound player and person than she’d been before her absence from the game. Her body was bolder too. Her clothes brighter, tighter—outfits I might have worn to a nightclub. Her game now possessed a power and elegance, an often overlooked facility with delicate ball-placement never seen before in the women’s game, perhaps not even in the men’s.
Of course, her reascendancy came with the same hateful chorus that had dogged her first great run. While Obama was running for president and Serena was reclaiming the top spot in the WTA rankings, I was working at a private club where it was not uncommon to hear comments about the presidential candidate that had little to do with his politics and everything to do with his looks and his unusual name.