2022.08.10 为什么塞雷娜-威廉姆斯的退役是不同的？

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Why Serena Williams’s Retirement Is Different
Her name is synonymous with tennis itself.

By Caira Conner
A photo of Serena Williams with a black backdrop tossing a ball
Julian Finney / Getty
AUGUST 10, 2022
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About the author: Caira Conner is a writer based in New York City.

Unless serena williams pulls off the kind of feat typically reserved for Hollywood endings at this year’s U.S. Open, 23 is the number of Grand Slam singles titles with which she will retire. It is a number that makes her the all-time winningest, slammiest singles champion, of any gender, in the modern incarnation of tennis (Rafael Nadal did recently inch closer to her record, capturing his 22nd at this year’s French Open, but still). Somehow, 23 is also one (one!) short of the record Williams—the winner of nearly $100 million in prize money from every surface and circumstance known to the sport—and millions of fans not-so-secretly hoped for.

The truth is, 24 was the number to beat. Twenty-four is the number of times the Australian tennis player Margaret Court won a Grand Slam singles title before retiring, in 1977. But any comparison falls comically short: Court won the majority of her slams before the Open Era of tennis (in which pros and amateurs compete against one another) began, in 1968. She competed during the time of wooden racquets, absent the dominance of topspin as the de facto style of play, and well before serves regularly crested over 100 miles an hour.


Williams doesn’t want to say she’s retiring from tennis. In her own words, on the cusp of her 41st birthday, she’s ready to “evolve away” from it. She has explained why for the September issue of Vogue. The most significant reason behind her decision to leave tennis appears to be her desire to expand her family with her husband, Alexis Ohanian, the Reddit co-founder. At this stage in life, she cannot have another child and play tennis like Serena Williams at the same time. The woman who has broken every barrier and defied the boundaries of the game has at last collided with the same fate of countless women before her: She simply can’t have it all.

Read: A tale of two tennis G.O.A.T.s

The pages of Williams’s Vogue story are framed with photographs of earlier appearances in the magazine, portals into periods of brilliance and zeitgeist across more than two decades. There she is with Venus Williams, her sister, in matching striped gowns on a sofa in 1998, one year before Serena won her first Grand Slam, at the U.S. Open, at 17 years old. Next, an exquisite, bodysuited lunge in 2003, taken shortly after her historic “Serena Slam” (four Grand Slams in a row, but not within a calendar year). And finally there she is, resplendent in red in 2015, the year she won her 19th Grand Slam at the Australian Open, her 20th at the French Open, and her 21st at Wimbledon. Twenty-two came one year later, also at Wimbledon. And then there was the illustrious 23, at the 2017 Australian Open, when she was 35 years old and two months pregnant with her daughter, Olympia. Five years later, it is Olympia who matters most.

For professional athletes—particularly those anointed with GOAT status—retirement, in act and idea, is a funny thing. These beings, light-years of talent and discipline and stamina beyond us mortals who admire them, are, technically, leaving the day jobs that made them rich and famous. In almost all cases, this pivotal change occurs when these people have many decades of life left to live.

Some star athletes fade comfortably, purposefully, into the background. Take Pete Sampras. Before Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic, it was Sampras who obliterated the standards for greatness in how men’s tennis was played, how many slams (14) could possibly be won. Sampras now spends his days married with children, blissfully removed from anything resembling celebrity. Another tennis great, Andre Agassi, opted to show how his career had actually felt. In 2009, three years after he retired, he published Open, a go-for-broke memoir on the sense of imprisonment he experienced during his life as a professional tennis player. It was, as The New York Times noted, “one of the most passionately anti-sports books ever written by a superstar athlete.” There were no platitudes on hard work or a champion’s mentality, no dithering over the necessary sacrifices or the payoffs to come. It looked squarely in the face at the deadening repetition inherent to training, the exhaustion in the travel, the physical loneliness of life on tour. It was perhaps the first time we got a true sense of a player’s reality, whether they won one major tournament or 25. Other phenoms, including Naomi Osaka, have since followed suit, speaking candidly about the toll their work takes on their mental health.

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Occasionally, some GOATs have false-launched their retirement, only to return shortly afterward. Tom Brady walked away from football in February 2022, after 22 seasons in the NFL. Six weeks later, he confirmed that he was returning for another snap. Michael Phelps retired from swimming in 2012, fresh off four gold medals at the London Olympic Games. He’d won six in Athens in 2004, and eight in Beijing in 2008. He was back in the pool by 2014, then retired “for real” in 2016 after Rio, and five more golds. Michael Jordan abruptly retired from basketball in 1993, citing his desire to play baseball after the murder of his father. He came back in 1995, retired for the second time in 1999, then came back again in 2001 before finally retiring for good in 2003.

Read: The astonishing greatness of Serena Williams

Williams’s career feels different, not just in what she has accomplished but in what she has endured––two decades’ worth of public commentary on her body, her race, her attitude, her anger, her wardrobe, her very womanhood.

In the Vogue essay, her sense of an ending is clear. The prose is touched with notes of melancholy. She suggests that if she was more like Brady, a man, then she’d have less of a crossroads to face—she could stay on the court, have her (fictional, counterfactual) wife carry another child. The reality is that Williams wants another baby; her daughter wants a sibling. Notably, Williams also referenced Caroline Wozniacki, the Danish former world No. 1 tennis player who retired after the 2020 Australian Open at the tender age of 29. Wozniacki had been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis two years earlier, and when she announced her plans to leave the sport in 2019, her words contained the sentiment Williams would later share. There was more in life she wanted to do. She hoped to start a family, and in order to do so, tennis had to go.


In the end, 23, not 24, may be the quantitative measure of Grand Slams that Serena Williams leaves us to count. But there is no metric for what she has upended and reimagined and blasted through, no recognizable contours to apply to her greatness, no way to assess her role in advancing social equity. Like other pioneers of quasi-“niche” sports, such as Tiger Woods and Tony Hawk, Williams’s name is synonymous with the thing she helped revolutionize. Even when she finally puts down her racquet, Williams won’t really leave us. She may not be able to dually serve the gods of tennis and motherhood, but generations of young athletes will continue to pick up racquets of their own because she inspired them to do so. A legacy like that is more than numbers.

Caira Conner is a writer based in New York City.



为什么塞雷娜-威廉姆斯的退役是不同的？
她的名字是网球本身的代名词。

凯拉-康纳报道
塞雷娜-威廉姆斯在黑色背景下抛球的照片
朱利安-芬尼/盖蒂
2022年8月10日
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关于作者。凯拉-康纳是驻纽约市的一名作家。

除非塞雷娜-威廉姆斯在今年的美国公开赛上完成了通常留给好莱坞结局的那种壮举，否则23个是她退休时获得的大满贯单打冠军数量。这个数字使她成为现代网球运动中任何性别的有史以来获胜最多的大满贯单打冠军（拉斐尔-纳达尔最近确实接近了她的记录，在今年的法国公开赛上夺得了他的第22个冠军，但仍然如此）。不知何故，23岁也离威廉姆斯的纪录还差一个（一个！）--从这项运动已知的各种表面和环境中获得近1亿美元的奖金--以及数百万球迷不那么秘密地希望的纪录。

事实是，24是要击败的数字。24是澳大利亚网球运动员玛格丽特-考特在1977年退役前赢得大满贯单打冠军的次数。但任何比较都是滑稽的：考特在1968年网球公开赛时代（职业选手和业余选手相互竞争）开始之前，就赢得了大部分大满贯。她在木制球拍时代参加比赛，没有将上旋球作为事实上的比赛风格，而且远在发球速度经常超过100英里/小时之前。


威廉姆斯并不想说她将从网球界退休。用她自己的话说，在她41岁生日的边缘，她已经准备好 "进化 "了。她已经为《Vogue》9月刊解释了原因。她决定离开网球背后最重要的原因似乎是她希望与她的丈夫Alexis Ohanian（Reddit联合创始人）扩大她的家庭。在人生的这个阶段，她不可能像塞雷娜-威廉姆斯那样同时拥有另一个孩子和打网球。这位打破一切障碍、挑战比赛极限的女性，终于与她之前无数女性的命运发生了碰撞。她根本不可能拥有这一切。

阅读。两个网球G.O.A.T.的故事

威廉姆斯在《Vogue》杂志上的故事的页面是以早期出现在杂志上的照片为框架的，这些照片是跨越20多年的辉煌时期和时代潮流的门户。1998年，她和她的姐姐维纳斯-威廉姆斯在沙发上穿着相配的条纹长裙，一年后，塞雷娜在美国公开赛上赢得了她的第一个大满贯，那一年她才17岁。接下来是2003年的一张精致的连体照，这是在她历史性的 "塞雷娜大满贯"（连续获得四个大满贯，但不是在一个日历年内）之后不久拍摄的。最后是她在2015年穿着红色衣服的样子，这一年她在澳大利亚公开赛上赢得了她的第19个大满贯，在法国公开赛上赢得了她的第20个，在温布尔登赢得了她的第21个。一年后的第22次，也是在温布尔登。然后是辉煌的23岁，在2017年澳大利亚公开赛上，当时她35岁，怀着她的女儿奥林匹亚两个月。五年后，最重要的还是奥林匹亚。

对于职业运动员--尤其是那些被冠以GOAT地位的运动员--退役，无论在行动上还是想法上，都是一件有趣的事情。这些人的天赋、纪律和耐力远超我们这些崇拜他们的凡人，从技术上讲，他们离开了使他们致富和出名的日常工作。几乎在所有情况下，这种关键的变化发生在这些人还有几十年寿命的时候。

一些明星运动员舒服地、有目的地淡出了背景。以皮特-桑普拉斯为例。在罗杰-费德勒、拉斐尔-纳达尔和诺瓦克-德约科维奇之前，是桑普拉斯抹去了男子网球运动的伟大标准，即可以赢得多少个大满贯（14个）。桑普拉斯现在已经结婚生子，幸福地远离了任何类似于名人的东西。另一位网球大师安德烈-阿加西选择了展示他的职业生涯的实际感受。2009年，在他退役三年后，他出版了《开放》，这是一本关于他在职业网球运动员生涯中所经历的囚禁感的大胆回忆录。正如《纽约时报》所指出的，这是 "超级明星运动员所写的最有激情的反体育书籍之一"。书中没有关于努力工作或冠军心态的陈词滥调，没有对必要的牺牲或未来的回报犹豫不决。它直面训练中固有的枯燥的重复，旅行中的疲惫，巡回赛生活中的身体孤独。这也许是我们第一次真正感受到球员的现实，无论他们是赢得了一场主要比赛还是25场比赛。此后，包括大坂直美在内的其他名将也纷纷效仿，直言不讳地讲述了他们的工作对其心理健康造成的伤害。

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偶尔也有一些GOATs假意退役，只是在不久后又回归。2022年2月，汤姆-布雷迪在NFL征战了22个赛季后离开了橄榄球。六周后，他确认自己又要回来打球了。迈克尔-菲尔普斯于2012年从游泳比赛中退役，当时他刚在伦敦奥运会上获得四枚金牌。他在2004年的雅典奥运会上赢得了六枚金牌，在2008年的北京奥运会上赢得了八枚。到2014年，他又回到了泳池，然后在2016年里约奥运会后 "真正 "退役，又拿了五块金牌。迈克尔-乔丹在1993年突然从篮球运动中退役，理由是他的父亲被谋杀后想打棒球。他在1995年复出，1999年第二次退役，然后在2001年再次复出，最后在2003年永远退役。

阅读。塞雷娜-威廉姆斯惊人的伟大之处

威廉姆斯的职业生涯给人的感觉是不同的，不仅仅是她所取得的成就，还有她所承受的一切--二十年来公众对她的身体、她的种族、她的态度、她的愤怒、她的衣着、她的女性身份的评论。

在《时尚》杂志的文章中，她对结局的感觉很明显。这篇散文带有忧郁的气息。她建议，如果她更像布雷迪，一个男人，那么她就不会有那么多的十字路口需要面对--她可以留在球场上，让她的（虚构的、反事实的）妻子再怀一个孩子。现实是，威廉姆斯想要另一个孩子；她的女儿想要一个兄弟姐妹。值得注意的是，威廉姆斯还提到了卡洛琳-沃兹尼亚奇，这位丹麦前世界第一网球选手在2020年澳大利亚网球公开赛后退役，年仅29岁。沃兹尼亚奇两年前被诊断出患有类风湿性关节炎，当她宣布计划在2019年离开这项运动时，她的话包含了威廉姆斯后来分享的情绪。在生活中，她有更多想做的事情。她希望建立一个家庭，而为了做到这一点，网球必须离开。


最后，23个，而不是24个，可能是塞雷娜-威廉姆斯留给我们的大满贯的量化指标。但是，对于她所颠覆、重塑和突破的东西，没有任何衡量标准，没有可识别的轮廓来适用于她的伟大，没有办法评估她在推动社会公平方面的作用。就像其他准 "小众 "运动的先驱，如泰格-伍兹和托尼-霍克，威廉姆斯的名字是她帮助革新的东西的同义词。即使她最终放下了球拍，威廉姆斯也不会真正离开我们。她可能无法同时为网球之神和母亲服务，但一代又一代的年轻运动员将继续拿起他们自己的球拍，因为她激励他们这样做。这样的遗产比数字更重要。

凯拉-康纳是驻纽约市的一名作家。