Serena Williams has won so many Grand Slam titles, several of them in dominant fashion, that they all blend together like the blueberries, orange juice, hemp powder and spinach I mix when I decide a healthy breakfast is needed.
The result is that there aren't too many moments that stand out, there aren't many stills that I can picture when thinking of her dominance in women's tennis.
I'm pretty sure, however, that a moment — or, rather, 49 seconds — from Williams' 6-1, 5-7, 6-2 Wimbledon final victory over Agnieszka Radwanska will last with me and many tennis fans for years to come.
It came in the pivotal third set, a set no one on this earth except, maybe, Radwanska thought possible after Williams exerted her power and will during a one-sided first set. Trailing 2-1, Williams stepped up to the baseline and dropped in a powerful serve.
Radwanska didn't move.
Williams received a new ball from the ball boy or girl — I wasn't monitoring that too closely — and stepped to the ad side of the baseline and uncorked another enormous serve.
Radwanska barely twitched.
You get the point (or, more accurately, Williams grabbed four straight points without Radwanska coming close to making any kind of contact with the ball). The game had commentator and 18-time grand slam winner Chris Evert gushing from ESPN's box. It had other tennis greats wondering, via Twitter, if such a thing had EVER been done on the lady's tour (which, remember, has been around a long time — since Billie Jean King created it in 1973).
She might not admit it, but those 49 seconds, that sense of helplessness she must have felt on Centre Court, finally broke the very-game Radwanska. In the next game, Williams finally got the critical break of serve. She didn't come close to losing a game the rest of the way.
When Williams powered a final backhand winner to close out the match, she fell to the court in jubilation. It's easy for the casual sports fan to think that with those missile-sized biceps and athleticism, tennis and winning comes easy for Williams.
They're, of course, forgetting or ignoring all the obstacles she's overcome and how much work she's put into the sport that she loves and the opportunity to be the best of her generation on the one surface in life where she feels completely comfortable.
Williams' fifth Wimbledon win matched her sister Venus' handful of championships and gave her 14 grand slam singles — just four shy of Evert and Navratilova's 18. Steffi Graf's 22 majors still seems untouchable.
Williams is capable of eclipsing Evert and Navratilova's number even playing in her 30s, but more on that in a second. First, it needs to be mentioned why Williams was so emotional after the final ball had been hit in London.
As polished as her tennis resume is, Williams' career has been bumpier than most Washington, DC roads (if you can't picture the comparison, come visit). Missing a pair of majors during the 2006 season due to a serious knee injury, falling completely out of the rankings and needing a wild card to compete at the U.S. Open couldn't have been easy for a seven-time major champion.
It was nothing compared to Williams' past two years. After a masterful performance at Wimbledon in 2010 — a tournament during which she didn't drop a set — Williams was again on top of the sport, No. 1 in the world.
Then, in a freak, accident, she cut her foot at a restaurant and needed 18 stitches. Still sidelined in early 2011, Williams confirmed she suffered hematoma and a pulmonory embolism while on a flight from New York to L.A. I won't get into the medical details, but the seriousness of the injury boils down to one sentence:
Thankfully, Williams made a full recovery, returned to tennis almost a year after her world nearly shattered, and now here she is, today, a major champion again — the first 30-year-old grand slam women's winner since Navratilova 22 years ago.
Which brings me back to that serve.
Evert said blatantly that it's better than half of the serves on the men's tour. Williams easily set a Wimbledon women's record for aces, with over 100. Ask Radwanska about it.
And that serve — so precise every time, the ball reaching the same apex before Williams' racket thunders through it; poor ball — will allow Williams to remain a force on a weakened, who's-turn-is-it-today? women's tour for quite sometime.
(Fun fact: Each of the past seven grand slam tournaments have been won by a different woman. On the men's side, there have only been four finalists!.)
Williams isn't the best mover on tour. Her net game leaves something to be desired. And she's not getting younger (although when asked during the trophy presentation if 30 is the new 20, she responded, "Oh my GOD, of course, hello!."). But with the best serve by a woman ever, with that ability to win games solely on her serve, Williams can continue to win majors — if not as smoothly as in 2010.
Then again, nothing has come easily for her since that last major.
Which only makes celebrations like Saturday's that much more enjoyable and rewarding.
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