SERENA WILLIAMS is the undisputed drama queen of Queens. Despite her clear status as the alpha female of women's tennis, the 30-year-old from Saginaw, Michigan, via Palm Beach Gardens Florida, doesn't half make a meal of winning her home grand slam.
She has been US champion three times – compared to five titles each at Wimbledon and in Paris – and you have to go back to 2008 for her most recent victory. Since then, she has been beaten twice while hurling abusive comments towards a line judge and a chair umpire, with one of those occasions occurring in last year's final when she last to Sam Stosur. In 2010, Serena withdrew from the tournament after sustaining a foot injury by standing on glass at a restaurant.
There have been other instalments of the Serena soap opera besides – not least the painstaking rebuilding of her career after she suffered a pulmonary embolism – but the younger Williams sister is sure to be the star turn at a venue which has defined her ever since her 1999 win as a 17-year-old made her the first African-American woman since Althea Gibson in 1958 to capture a major singles championship.
It seemed for all the world like a prologue to intrigues to come when she squandered some of the momentum she gained from her peerless Wimbledon and Olympics victories by crashing out of the Western and Southern Open 6-4, 6-4 to Angelique Kerber last week.
Not that there aren't other engaging plot lines bubbling under in the women's singles competition. Kim Clijsters, three times a winner here, including when she rocked up in 2009 with her young baby in tow, finally brings down the curtain on her career. Serena's sister Venus, despite suffering from an autoimmune condition called Sjogren's syndrome, might just be playing her way into form, while the likes of Kerber, Maria Sharapova, Viktoria Azarenka, Agnieszka Radwanska and Petra Kvitova populate a young, hungry top 10 keen to put such veterans out to pasture. The last seven women's grand slam titles have been won by seven different players and the chance of an eighth coming along should not be discounted.
Chris Evert, the ESPN pundit who won this title six times, feels the hard court will take some of the sting out of Serena's serve, which means she will have to work harder than at Wimbledon or the Olympics if she is to end her absence from the Flushing Meadows honour roll. Evert feels Williams' biggest obstacle may just be herself. "Serena has proved more times than anyone that when she's motivated and healthy and playing well, she's the player to beat; I think that's obvious," Evert said. "If you put Sharapova at her best against Serena at her best playing for a title, you know, Serena is going to be the one to win. As we saw at the Australian when she was out early, and the French when she was out early, and a couple weeks ago when she lost a match, the question is: can she keep up that level of tennis consistently over a two-week period?
"The danger is she is going to be her own worst opponent. The older you get the more flat days you have. Also, Wimbledon and the Olympics were on grass and basically that's her surface: that's where no-one is going to return her serve and she's going to get 20 aces a match. Serena will have to work harder to win the US Open than she did Wimbledon. She had a lot of free points there and at the Olympics because it was on grass and shots didn't come back. This is be a different story. She will have to run down a lot more balls and get a lot more balls back, be more consistent and probably be in even better shape.
"There are a lot of eager players out there, as we have seen in the last couple weeks, with Li Na and Kvitova and [Caroline] Wozniacki and Sharapova, Azarenka. There is Kim Clijsters, in her last year, and I have not even mentioned Stosur. Can Serena do it? Of course she can. But will she do it? I'm not 100% sure."
As with the men, it has been a gruelling season for the women, and much will depend on which players arrive in New York in peak condition. Radwanska, the Wimbledon finalist and world No.2, pulled out of a tournament at New Haven recently; Sharapova has been suffering with a virus; and Clijsters has complained of injury. The Belgian is still just 29, however, and adrenalin might help her to bow out in style.
"Kim has every ingredient to win it again," Evert said. "She's one of the few players who plays great defensively as well as offensively. She can run down balls all day. That's why she needs her body to be healthy and that's sort of a question mark right now. She has every shot in the book: she can volley and hit ground strokes and she has a good serve. She can handle the power of a Serena or a Sharapova very well.
"I think she's been a little disappointed with the way her summer has panned out and would have liked to have done better at Wimbledon and the Olympics. But hopefully she's excited about her last hurrah coming at a special place where she's had so many good memories."
Clijsters might just secure her fairytale ending by winning a fourth title but, in all likelihood, Flushing Meadows owes a victory just as much to Serena Williams.
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