Opinion | Serena Williams staves off retirement — and the No. 2 seed — with a throwback performance at U.S. Open

NEW YORK—On the night she won Round 1, Serena Williams felt the vibrations from an adoring crowd — their yowling of love — in her chest.

On the night she won Round 2, the reverberations of worship must have reached deep into the ventricles of her heart.

“Queen Mama”, as written in gold on her sneakers — salvo towards a daughter who turns five on Thursday — is the compound identity that defines the greatest tennis player of her era, eras, male or female. Roger Federer: 20 Grand Slam titles; Novak Djokovic: 21 Grand Slam titles; Rafael Nadal: 22 Grand Slam titles.

Serena: 23.

And if it ends later this week or next, that’s not even the half of it — the why of her enthralling essence, which transcends tennis, just as she has transcended sports.

Williams has won U.S. Open matches in her teens, her 20s, her 30s, her 40s.

Who would dare bet against a record-equalling 24th championship at this moment? A seventh title here in Queens?

That she prevailed Wednesday night 7-6(5), 2-6, 6-2 in the second round at Flushing Meadows against the World No. 2 — how Serena classic is that? Digging out the victory on will-times-talent, as she has so many times before. Even if she’d lost, who would remember, years from now, that the victor who ushered her out of majors tennis was an Estonian by the name of Anett Kontaveit.

I could give you the stat line, the match analysis. But it hardly matters, except indisputably to Williams, because she’s now and always and forever about winning. To have slipped into retirement on a loss would have stung immeasurably. But this 40-year-old — a month shy of 41 — unspooled a ferocious first set on the strength of her signature potent serve and deadeye shotmaking, with Mercury wings on her feet. In shoes tied with real gold laces, and that sparkle in her dress, in her headband — those were genuine diamond brilliants.

With a quicksilver tennis brain.

Williams, throaty grunts on every exertion shot — she taught a generation of female players to roar. Kontaveit with her delicate little yips in response, though she too played a hell of a high quality match, muscling by Williams in the second set, forcing a decider third.

Everyone watching thought: My goodness, she can really do this, she can get past the World No. 2 who looked like a wide-eyed bunny in the headlights in that opening set — a World No. 2, by the way, who’s never advanced further than the quarterfinal of a Slam, who was all of three when Williams claimed her first majors title, right here at Flushing Meadows, just 17 years old.

It was wall-to-wall Serena in the first frame, Kontaveit surging with nerviness in the second frame, savoring her double-break edge, and Serena just being Serena in the third, as husband Alexis Ohanian went wild in her box. No little mini-me daughter Olympia present for this match, regrettably.

One really must wonder if Williams wants to take it back in the midst of this Slam, her announcement via Vogue magazine essay on Aug. 19, during the National Bank Open in Toronto, that she intended to “evolve” out of tennis, move forward with the rest of her life, the primary objective to expand her family, have another baby, because Olympia has been demanding a little sister — adamantly not a little brother.

While coyly refusing to give a specific time and date for hanging up her spurs, Williams did, after her win over Danka Kovinić on Monday, make slight noises about having a rethink. “I absolutely love being out there,” she’d told reporters. “The more tournaments I play, I feel like the more I can belong out there. That’s a tough feeling to have, and to leave knowing the more you do it, the more you can shine.”

Maybe she was just shining us on.

But the Williams of Wednesday was not the Williams of the past few weeks, actually stretching back to her first-round elimination in Wimbledon — loser in three of four matches, including Toronto, since returning from a yearlong injury layoff. She neither looked nor sounded like a legend in decline. This was Williams at a sharpness approaching her best of years, making shots with conviction, and profiting from a bunch of good fortune too, on net-cord shots that felt the right way, and groundstrokes that kissed the lines, playing with more freedom than she’s exhibited in ages.

Simply irresistible.

“I’m loving this crowd,” she said in her on-court interview, as they volubly loved her back. “Oh my goodness, it’s really fantastic. There’s still a little left in me. We’ll see…”

How did she do it, again, on this night?

“Well, I’m a pretty good player,” she laughed, a wide grin on her face, but she was serious, you know? “I love a challenge, I love rising to the challenge.”

The handful of matches she’d played before arriving in Queens, why, Williams admitted she hadn’t even recognized herself. Which might have plenty to do with her looking over the horizon towards a post-tennis existence, her life so crammed with other interests, business opportunities, an investment company that supports women and minorities.

“This isn’t me!” she said, of recent Serena. “The last couple of matches here in New York it’s really come together.”

Asked if she’d surprised herself, with her level of tennis right now, Williams narrowed her eyes. Made me think of a line in “The Long Goodbye” by Raymond Chandler: “The girl gave him a look that ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back.”

Serena: “I’m just Serena, you know?”

Oh, we know.

Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno

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