 Return to LNP
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Famous show back on the road
Sunday, 30 January 2005 - 11:55 PM SL Time
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On the eve of the Australian Open, above a story charting the dip in fortunes of the Williams sisters, a Melbourne newspaper asked in a headline: `Is the show almost over'`
Two weeks later, her seventh grand slam title in the bag, Serena Williams provided the answer. After an 18-month detour caused by injuries and family tragedy, the most famous show in women's tennis is back on the road.
While the jury is still out on elder sister Venus, who has not won a grand slam title since 2001 and was bundled out in the fourth round, Serena wiped away the question-marks with her 2-6, 6-3, 6-0 victory over Lindsay Davenport.
The victory catapulted Williams from seventh to second in the world rankings and the 23-year-old American is now eyeing Davenport's No.1 status.
`I'm excited to be No.2 now. It's been a long way coming back. I'm almost at my goal and it feels great. And this grand slam win, obviously is great for me,` Williams said.
`I haven't played enough tournaments yet but I really feel that I'm doing the best that I can and I think it will all pay off. Eventually I will be where I want to be.`
Williams' ranking dropped outside the top 10 last season for the first time in five years as she struggled to recover from injuries and the trauma of the murder of her half-sister Yetunde Price in September 2003.
Defeats to rising Russian star Maria Sharapova in the Wimbledon final and the season-ending WTA Tour Championships in Los Angeles heightened speculation about whether she could ever recover her former dominance.
Williams, who reacted angrily during the tournament when asked to comment on the view that her career was in decline, has enjoyed having the last word.
`This makes it that much sweeter because people are always wondering what's happening to us. It's nothing. We're just working really hard.
`The matches we lose, it's just maybe a few points here, a few points there of not playing well,` she said.
`For me, I've always considered myself the best and the top. I never considered that I was out of it ' ever.`
Her seventh grand slam secure ' she now stands equal eighth on the all-time list of winners alongside Evonne Goolagong Cawley and Maria Bueno ' Williams is now set on reclaiming the French Open at Roland Garros.
`I feel that I need to win the French because I've won two of each already except for the French,` Williams said. `I've only won one. So I feel I need to win another French Open so I can even them out.`
Though clay is her least favourite surface, none of her rivals will underestimate her determination to succeed. More than anything, it was the manner of her victory in Melbourne, almost as much as the fact of it, that has erased questions about her competitive hunger.
Time and again when the chips were down during the past championship fortnight, sheer force of character pulled her through.
In the semi-finals she saved three match-points before clawing her way back to beat Sharapova; in the final she shrugged off injury to defeat Davenport.
The turning point in Saturday's final at the Rod Laver Arena was the crucial fifth game of the second set, when she survived six break points that would have left Davenport in control at 3-2.
`I just did not want to lose that particular game. I was serving so many balls my arm was hurting. I said 'I don't care if my arm falls off, I'm not going to lose this game.'
`I just kept going for the serves and I just kept fighting. I knew that was a very pivotal game. For some reason, I just felt it, I said `Okay, I need to win this one.`
Even after the opening game of the first set, when a back injury restricted her range of movement and prevented her from serving at full tilt, Williams said quitting had never crossed her mind.
`I never, ever, think that I have to give up, even in the most dire of situations,` she said.
Later, Williams revealed that she celebrated her first ever grand slam, at the US Open in 1999, with a night out at the movies. The film was M. Night Shyamalan's thriller 'The Sixth Sense'.
No trips to the cinema were planned after Saturday's victory. Even so, it was the title of another film by Shyamalan that sprang to mind: 'Unbreakable.'
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