Serena Williams Wins Sixth Wimbledon Championship

[Curt James]

Serena Williams Wins Sixth Wimbledon Championship

Buuuut... this is more about smashing a troll than her championship.


Serena wins number six!


Serena and fan J.K. Rowling


Rowling tweets!


Troll trolls


Rowling pounces!

Pretty sweet that Rowling put the troll in his place and, yeah, it speaks to the whole "not feminine enough" nonsense's insanity. Certainly in Williams' case.

[Curt James]

And an actual report on her win...

Thirty-three-year-old American defeats 21-year-old Spaniard Garbiñe Muguruza, taking fourth straight Grand Slam Tournament

By Tom Perrotta
July 11, 2015

Wimbledon, England—After winning her sixth Wimbledon tennis title on Saturday, Serena Williams was giddy. She walked off Centre Court while balancing the victory plate on her head. She extended her arms and smiled. Later, strolling through the halls inside the court, she was greeted with hugs, kisses and kind words from family, friends and Wimbledon officials.

“Oh, I could do a cartwheel,” Williams said.

And why not? The 33-year-old American has won four straight Grand Slam singles titles, beginning with the U.S. Open last year. From 2002 to 2003, Williams also won four straight major titles. Back then, it was dubbed a “Serena Slam.”

Her 6-4, 6-4 victory on Saturday over Garbiñe Muguruza, a first-time Grand Slam finalist, puts Williams within reach of another milestone: If she wins the U.S. Open in September, she will become the first woman to win all four major titles in the same year since Steffi Graf in 1988.

Williams now has 21 Grand Slam singles titles, one fewer than Graf, who won more than any player since the start of the Open era, which began in 1968. Margaret Court, who played in the 1960s and 1970s, holds the all-time record for major titles, with 24.

Williams has won each of the sport’s four major titles—the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open—at least three times. She has won Olympic gold medals in singles and doubles. She has won eight major titles since reaching the age of 30 and is now the oldest woman in the Open era to win a major title.

Williams, who has won the U.S. Open three straight years, said she was considering the historic possibilities, but would have to put them out of her mind soon. “I can’t think about that. I have to go into New York thinking, listen, I want to win the U.S. Open,” she said. “That’s how I got through this, it wasn’t about winning the Serena Slam, it was about winning Wimbledon.”

Another way Williams keeps her mind from straying while she’s playing big matches: She sings songs in her head. “I usually sing ‘What a Feeling’ by Irene Cara,” she said.

No player in tennis history has been this good for this long. It has been nearly 16 years since Williams won her first Grand Slam tournament at the 1999 U.S. Open, when she was 17 years old. Many champions have lasted a long time in tennis, but none have had more years and months between their first major title and their last. And this doesn’t figure to be the last title Williams will win.

“She loves to be No. 1, she loves to win Grand Slams, and as long as she feels she can, I think she will,” her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, said.

But Williams has experienced difficult times, too. Her tennis renaissance over the past four years began after she had two operations to repair a tendon in her foot, and suffered a blood clot and a hematoma. She missed 11 months of tennis before she started playing again in June 2011. Since then, she has a record of 249-20 and 81-9 at the Grand Slam events. She has won 31 tournaments in that span, including eight major titles, while losing in just three finals.

Lately, Williams has flirted with defeat in many of her matches, but she is 14-0 in decisive third sets this season. At this year’s Wimbledon, she faced a difficult draw. In the third round, she played Britain’s Heather Watson, a local favorite, and trailed by a set and two breaks of serve before making a comeback.

In the fourth round, she played her older sister Venus, who has beaten her more times than any other player. In the quarterfinals, former No. 1 Victoria Azarenka pushed Williams to three sets. Then in the semifinals Williams beat Maria Sharapova, a player Williams has dominated for years, but also the only other player, besides her sister Venus, to beat Williams in a Wimbledon final.

“She had such a tough draw here,” Mouratoglou said. “If you see how much effort it takes to win one [major], to be able to win four in a row is completely incredible.”

In the final, Muguruza also pushed Williams hard. She broke serve in the first game of the match before Williams came back. In the second set, Muguruza fell behind 5-1 before making a charge, backed by a cheering crowd. Williams was clearly nervous, but that didn’t matter in the end. She broke Muguruza’s serve in the final game and avoided further drama.

During the trophy ceremony, the crowd gave Muguruza a standing ovation. “I couldn’t stop crying,” Muguruza said. “I make all these people feel this in a tennis court?”

Williams said fitness and improved training have been the key to her late-career surge. “I’ve never loved working out,” she said. “When I first started, I would always ride the bike, work on my legs. Then I started doing more running. Then I started doing more sprint work. At one point I was boxing. Every few years I’m always doing something.”

Indeed, her footwork patterns are noticeably better. She cuts off more balls by approaching them at an angle, rather than moving laterally. Mouratoglou said that seemingly small adjustment wins a lot of points. “Her ability to move up the balls and take them early makes a big difference,” Mouratoglou said. “Fifty centimeters difference is a world of difference.”

The shot that still defines Williams, though, is her serve. There has never been a better one in women’s tennis. Under pressure, it is Williams’s best weapon, and she used it with great effect at Wimbledon. In her seven matches here, 45% of the serves she hit weren’t returned in play. She hit 80 aces and won more than half of her second-serve points.

Williams has dominated tennis more convincingly than any player who has come before her. Only one woman who owns a Grand Slam singles title has finished her career with a winning record against Williams: Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario, who beat Williams four times, three of which came before Williams turned 18.

Williams has lost big matches. She has had trouble, at times, against other all-time great players. But no one has been able to solve her. “I’m like a sponge,” Williams said. “When I lose, I just gather up that information, I expand, and I just, I don’t know, I learn so much from every loss.”

Mouratoglou said that if there was a way to consistently beat Williams when she’s at her best, he had yet to figure it out. “No one has ever found the key yet,” Mouratoglou said. “The key is hidden really, really well.”

More @ http://www.wsj.com/articles/serena-w...hip-1436626560