35 fascinating things to know about Serena Williams on her 35th birthday
Serena Williams, one of the greatest athletes sports has ever seen, turns 35 on Monday, an age at which most tennis players are deep into retirement or down in the WTA rankings. Serena, however, endures, winning Wimbledon in 2016, making the finals of the Australian Open and French Open and losing a heartbreaker in the semifinals of this month's U.S. Open. On her big birthday (it's divisible by five), we celebrate 35 things about the 35-year-old Serena Williams.
1. Serena is tied with Steffi Graf for the most majors won in the Open Era.
2. Serena has only had six losing streaks in her 21-year career. I want to repeat that because it's so insane: Serena Williams has been playing for more than two decades and has lost back-to-back matches just six times. The last losing streak came seven years ago when she oddly dropped four in-a-row during the spring of 2009. (She blamed scheduling.) In the past decade she's only had one other losing streak - one that also oddly featured more than two-straight losses. Serena dropped three straight in 2007, at the end of the season when her mind starts wandering and she tends to lose interest in the sport. Perspective: World No. 1 Angelique Kerber has had two losing streaks (both of the three-match variety) in 2016 alone.
3. In matchups against women who have been ranked N0. 1, Serena has just one losing record, dropping four of seven against a player whose career she only slightly overlapped: Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario. Against everybody else, from Steffi Graf (1-1) to Jennifer Capriati (10-7) to Martina Hingis (7-6) to Monica Seles (4-1) to Maria Sharapova (19-2), Serena is at .500 or, in the case of Sharapova, Caroline Wozniacki and Ana Ivanovic, way, way, over that.
4. Against players who have been inside the top 10 at any point in their career, Serena only has three losing records: Sanchez-Vicario, No. 4 Mary Joe Fernande and No. 9 Paola Suarez.
5. Serena is 168-66 in matches against top-10 players but she's a a staggering 381-96 in matches against players who would make the top 10 in their career.
6. In her career, Serena has only lost 61 matches (!) to players ranked No. 11 or worse. That's another checkmark in the "insane" stat book.
7. When Serena played her first professional match in October 1995, Braveheart, The Usual Suspects and Batman Forever (the Val Kilmer one) were still in theaters. Seinfeld was days away from airing its Soup Nazi episode. And Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise was on its way to becoming 1995's No. 1 song (and if aren't currently watching Gangsta's Paradise on YouTube then we can't be friends, which shouldn't sadden many Serena fans - who email me constantly saying I'm too hard on her - and/or Boston residents because, you see, the Pats are cheaters but their fans don't like hearing it).
8. If you take every single player on the WTA tour - all of them - they have 19 Slam titles, combined. Serena has 22, of course. (The absence of Maria Sharapova and her five majors make this stat possible. Of course, if you combined the Williams' sisters and pit them against the rest of the WTA, even with Sharapova, the count is 29 to 17.)
9. Every time she wins a Grand Slam from now until the end of her career, Serena will break her own record as the oldest winner of a major. She broke Martina Navratilova's mark at Wimbledon in 2015 and bested it at again this year at the All-England Club.
10. Since she started winning Slams in bulk (15 seasons ago) and played all four majors, Serena has only won a single major just three times. One of those was this year, obviously.
11. Here's how far Serena has made it at Grand Slams since the 1999 U.S. Open (her first major win):
DNP - 10
1R - 1
2R - 1
3R - 4
4R - 6
QF - 13
SF - 5
F - 6
Win - 22
12. Looking at that list, if you take away her 13 quarterfinal losses, Serena has just one more loss in the six other rounds of Grand Slams than she has major titles. That's another of those "take a step back and wrap your head around it" stats. I still don't think I fully appreciate it, but maybe that's because I've had Gangsta's Paradise stuck in my head for the last two hours.
13. Serena has won 37% of the majors she's entered since that 1999 U.S. Open. Caroline Wozniacki, the former world No. 1 and Serena's good friend, won 47% of her matches in 2016 prior to the U.S. Open. Overall for her career, Serena's win percentage at Slams is a still-staggering 34%.
14. She's the only player in history to have six or more titles at three different Grand Slams. Serena has seven Wimbledon titles (tied for second most in history), six Australian Opens (first) and six U.S. Opens (tied for first). The French Open is where Serena is slacking. She's only won that three times, which is tied for fourth most in the Open era. Weak.
15. Entering this year, Serena had been a remarkable 21-4 in Grand Slam finals. Despite her trip-ups, that number is now a still-amazing 22-6.
16. Serena is just as good in Slam semifinals, posting a 28-5 record in those, which includes the two losses from this season. Overall, she's 49-9 in SF and F matches in the majors.
17. Though Serena has proved she can be a tremendous comeback artist (especially of late), she's the greatest frontrunner tennis has ever seen. In Grand Slam finals, she's 20-0 when she wins the first set. In finals in which she loses the first set, she's 2-6.
18. In all finals, Serena is 58-3 when winning the first set and has only lost one such match in the past nine seasons. She's won 11 of 27 finals that saw her lose the first set.
19. In finals of all tournaments, Serena was 34-3 from the 2010 Australian Open until the start of this year. In 2016, she's 2-3 with two coming in Slam finals, to Garbine Muguruza and the new world No. 1 Angelique Kerber.
20. Kerber took over the top spot from Serena after winning the U.S. Open. It broke Serena's more than three-year reign at No. 1 (186 weeks) which tied her with Graf for the longest streak in history. Overall, Serena has been No. 1 for 309 weeks (just under six years) which puts her behind Graf (377 weeks) and Navratilova (332 weeks). Serena would need 68 more weeks at the top to tie Graf, something I don't think is in the cards. As her career winds down, expect Serena to play even fewer events than normal (and she plays less than any top player). But if Kerber can't build on her tremendous 2016 and if the WTA continues to be a fragmented tour in which every tournament is wide open, Graf's mark could still be in play.
21. In her career, Serena has lost just three matches to players ranked below 100 - and this is for her whole career, not just when she started becoming a force. (Though you could argue she was always one.) Those losses came to No. 149 Anne Miller (6-1, 6-1 in Serena's first match), No. 127 Tian Tian Sun (6-2, 7-6 (7) in 2005) and, most famously, No. 111 Virginie Razzano (6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-3 in the first round of the 2012 French Open). How impressive is this? Roger Federer - Serena's greatest contemporary - has lost 20 matches to sub-100 players. Only two were in the last 11 years, so that's about the norm, but 11 came when Federer was still a teenager. Serena started from the top and now she's here.
22. From 2004-2006, Serena had a sort of tennis walkabout. Her game suffered due to injury, apathy and being out of shape, which was sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In 2005 and 2006 she won one tournament - the Australian Open. (Other players win a Slam because they have the fortnight of their lives, Serena wins Slams when she's indifferent.) She entered the 2007 season ranked No. 95 and hadn't made a Slam final since the 2005 Australian Open. Then she went out and won the '07 Aussie Open too. It wasn't until the next year that she had a true return to form, however.
23. In the almost five years after 2003 Wimbledon up until the 2008 U.S. Open, Serena won two Grand Slams. She won that many Slams in 35 days over last June and July.
24. There were more Serena struggles (this time almost entirely related to injury) in 2011 and the first half of 2012. Then, after that first-round loss at the French Open, she seemed to rededicate herself, hiring a new coach (Patrick Mouratoglou), getting into the best shape of her life and playing a fearless brand of tennis that intimated opponents even more than before. She wasn't just physically powerful but she was more mentally powerful than ever before. In the 13 Slams after that French Open loss, Serena won eight. And overall she's won exactly half her majors (nine of 18) since crying on the court following the Razzano loss.
25. This is more opinion than fact, but I think most would agree nonetheless: Those "lost" tennis years, when Serena explored what life had offer beyond the tennis court, is what has contributed to her playing top-tier tennis in her 30s. Early in the careers of the Williams sisters, it was assumed they'd be like many tennis players and be out of the sport by the time they hit 30. They had so many off-court interests. But over that time (and through Venus's health issues) it seems like both have realized that they can have a healthy balance as they stay on the court and then will have plenty of time for fashion, designing, writing, twerking in Beyonce videos or whatever else they want to do on the sad day their careers end.
26. Serena (and Venus) were ranked No. 1 in doubles for eight weeks in 2010. They were preceded and succeeded by tennis powers Liezel Huber and Gisela Dulko.
27. The sisters are 14-0 in Grand Slam doubles finals and are 3-0 in Olympic gold-medal matches. From 2008-10 they played in eight major tournaments together and won seven.
28. The $82,500 fine Serena received for profanely threatening a lineswoman at the 2009 U.S. Open was the largest ever assessed to a tennis player. Given that Serena made $350,000 for making that semifinal and $6.5 million that season (on the court - she made triple off of it), it was barely a blip to the checking account. She's made more than $80 million in winnings in her career.
29. If you double Serena's impressive 772 wins (fifth all time) she'd only be a handful of matches ahead of all-time leader Martina Navratilova, which speaks to Martina's longevity and the changes in tennis over the last 35 years.
30. John McEnroe who, to be fair, is prone to hyperbole (remember future No. 1 Donald Young?) says Serena's serve is the greatest weapon in tennis history. There is no hyperbole in that statement.
31. The greatest replay system in sports - tennis's Hawk-eye - was implemented after Serena's bizarre three-set quarterfinal loss to Jennifer Capriati in the 2004 U.S. Open. The technology had existed and was in use by television networks but the Capriati match - in which numerous calls went against Serena, all proven wrong by Hawk-eye - forced the hand of the ATP and WTA.
32. Unless you count Michael Jordan and his sneakers, Serena Williams is the greatest fashion icon sports has ever seen. She was first known for her bouncing braids (which once delayed a match as they fell out) and her outrageous outfits (including a jean skirt at the U.S. Open). Now, her Nike kits give her a singular on-court style while she creates one off the court, designing a line at New York Fashion Week and making appearances in Paris and Milan looking chic and making worldwide headlines.
33. Among Serena's IMDB credits: Pixels, Seven Days in Hell, Drop Dead Diva, ER, Law & Order: SVU, America's Next Top Model and appearances on every big talk-show (Letterman, Leno, Fallon, Conan, Larry King, Ellen, Oprah, Danza - you forgot Tony D. had a talk show, didn't you?) and morning program (Today, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning).
34. While birthday wishes are coming in from all over the world, from famous athletes, major media entities and publications such as Vogue, Sports Illustrated and Ebony, the irony is that Serena doesn't celebrate birthdays. Her Jehovah's Witness faith doesn't allow it.
35. Only three women aged 35 or older have won a WTA event (Billie Jean King, Kimiko Date-Kurmm and Navratilova). And Serena has a ways to go if she wants to set that record: King won her last event four months short of her 40th birthday. Hey, it always helps to set new goals.
