One thing has always intrigued me in discussions about sport. There has never been – or ever allowed to be – a greatest/best of all time in any sport. References to this expression have always been masculine.
The greatest in football, Pele. Basketball’s greatest, Michael Jordan – and there are those who put Kobe Bryant or LeBron James in this fight. Swimming’s greatest, Michael Phelps. Athletics’ greatest, Usain Bolt. The greatest in tennis, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic.
Well, they already had the audacity (and not a few times) to start a discussion about the “greatest/best tennis player of all time” without including the name of what arguably – by numbers, inclusive – is the biggest, Serena Williams.
When they spoke of her, they said “the greatest in women’s tennis”. Wow, but she has more Grand Slam titles than any of the men named above (Federer is 20, Nadal is 22, Djokovic is 21; Serena is 23 — and she got one of them pregnant!). And when the debate arose about them, the genre was never defined as “the greatest of all time in men’s tennis.” With her, there was always this care (or this caveat).
It was as if they had the fear and resistance to admit that the biggest name in a sport could indeed be female. And comments will appear here to diminish it, say that women’s tennis has not had so much competition, that it is much easier to win 23 titles among women than among men, and blah blah blah.
They don’t conform. But Serena never resigned either. With defeat, with prejudices, with barriers that appeared in the most victorious journey that a tennis player has ever built so far in the open era. They tried everything to bring her down, but she dared to stand. She dared to reach the top and remain there for two decades.
Finally, in retirement from yet another epic journey at the US Open (those who watched Serena’s three games, which eliminated the number two tennis player from the ranking, noticed that even at 40 she never gave up), the world finally recognized: the greatest of all time.
In English it is even easier. Because saying “greatest of all time” doesn’t need an article. In Portuguese, when you translate “biggest of all times” or “biggest in history” it needs to come “o” or “a” in front. Interestingly, in discussions about sport, we have never seen this expression in Portuguese preceded by “a”. It doesn’t matter if a woman’s numbers are higher than a man’s in the same modality, when it comes to her, they always seem to see the need to define gender.
“Nadal is champion of the Australian Open and becomes the biggest Grand Slam winner in history”; “Nadal is the greatest winner of all time”; “Nadal becomes the greatest champion in history”; these were some of the calls that multiplied in the Brazilian press in January of this year, when the Spaniard passed Djokovic and became the biggest winner of the MEN’s tennis Grand Slams. But this detail was always omitted. They forgot that, if you were going to say “tennis”, without the genre accompanying, the biggest winner was a winner, Serena Williams.
In retirement, the American woman needs to be recognized for what she is. Biggest of all time. And that title goes beyond the Grand Slams she won on the court. A protagonist of a mostly white, predominantly male and elitist sport, Serena Williams forcibly lifted her throne and made the world crown a black queen, from the favela (their ghetto), with braided hair and a muscular body, showing women that the “standards ” now they are the ones who will define.
To her, our eternal thanks. Thank you for coming into the world to be “just Serena” and change the history of the sport.
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