Serena's last ever match

its a pity serena did not pass m courts 24 slam total. court won 11 australian opens at a time when her two main rivals maria bueno and billy jean king did not travel regularly to the aus open.
serena had a child at a crucial time in her career. when she came back she reached 4 slam finals but lost them all. if she did not get pregnant, i have no doubt she would have won that crucial slam or 2..........but she has been a great champion and is no doubt the goat despite not having that crucial stat............

Court's record is much more deeply flawed than that, majority of her slam wins were 6 round matches rather than today's 7, in the early days I think she played some with just 5 rounds and they were in All Aussie fields, her slam record is practically meaningless when compared to Serena's and the like. On paper it would have been great for her to beat 24 or match it but in reality it's largely discounted in tennis. Half of courts slams were in the amateur era and the rest where when the pro tour was in it's infancy. If by some miracle she won the US Open (will be out by R4) I wouldn't be surprised if she tried next year one last time (bad idea). The (glorified) rivalry I enjoyed most wasn't Sharapova (a procession often in straights) or Venus, but Henin, that was the toughest match up she had in her career apart from her sister, watched the last match they played in Oz a few times back. There was Azarenka who gave her a load of tough matches as well but she was mostly outlasted with less tools in the box than Justine to fall back on.

There isn't anyone anymore to sell the wta tour the way the Williams's sisters did (and Sharapova for her looks), nobody wants the limelight, nobody dominates, nobody transcends the sport, the nearest is Osaka but she's way to introverted to be universally popular. Ryba just won Wimbledon, another example of a player that feels like she's just come off of the production line, big, tall, strong, personalityless. Men's game also not in the shape it used to be, where Novak and Nadal pack up in the next 2-3 years they'll only be Kyrgios making headlines throwing chairs on court and whatnot. A chance Tennis could go the same way Snooker has gone, that had a golden period for a while that's never been seen since, new stars needed with personality otherwise it Tennis could be heading to the doldrums.

On a positive note SoranaGOAT is still an active player.

Women's tennis will be fine imo. It might not go back to the heights of the Williams sisters + Russians era in a while, but Osaka is huge and Gauff has the chance to be even bigger if she lives up to her hype. If players from big markets such as Raducanu, Andreescu and Zheng become/return to being top players that will also help.

It's always sad to see legends go, but it's time for Serena. She probably would have done so a while ago if not for chasing Court's record, which as you say isn't really relevant anyway. I haven't always been Serena's biggest fan, but she has helped the sport immensely.

As for the men, Alcaraz will be huge. He was drawing big crowds even before he started having big wins and the interest will only grow bigger the more titles he wins.

A shame she didn't jack it in after going past Graf's 22 cos that's the more realistic comparison.

Seems she's finally realised old father time gets to us all eventually.

No doubt Billie Jean & the woke crew will seethe that Margaret Court will continue to be recognised.

that's just the thing, players like Osaka and Gauff have limited markets, they could never be the worldwide stars that the Williams sisters or Sharapova were they transcended the sport to the point where if you knew nothing about Tennis you still knew who they were, same as Kournikova. Osaka has the big Japanese and American backing but is useless outside of hard courts, does not really appeal to men, is highly unlikely to win the Jewell in Tennis' crown that is Wimbledon that launched Maria (not Tatjana) onto the world stage and also annoys a lot of people with things she says. In other words she's not really someone who can put bums on seats worldwide only in pockets, whereas the aforementioned were all box office for differing reasons, as we know, more people turned up to AK's practice sessions than watched Davenport play matches. Gauff I think will come good but like everyone else on tour with the possible exception of Swiatek, doesn't have the game to dominate the tour like the Williams's so there's a ceiling, and she's also not really a bums on seat seller.

Evert/Navratilova followed by Graf/Seles followed by Serena/Venus and now there's not really anyone they can pass the baton too. Not sure if Swiatek can maintain her form across all the slams but she is also not very marketable at all. I can only see different and random slam winners for the foreseeable with Iga popping up and claiming the odd one here and now.

Alcaraz I think is going to be a box office player once he starts making these big finals that is true. But he's going to need a consistent rival to rival the rivalries we've had the last 15 years, but he's no Federer who's probably the most marketable sportsperson of all time let alone tennis player.

Incidentally, Eddie Jones the England Rugby coach recently talked about players he's worked with lacking  resilience and leadership skills because they are privately educated, you can relay that to British Tennis where I'd hazard a guess a fair few of them stemmed from over the years based on their plummy voices. Of course the posh boys of Rugby have pushed back on this but they would, inject some working class grit and fight and you might get more Andy Murray's on the scene, who had to go to another country to find a proper tennis academy, they now have Emma but that's just a case of throw enough darts and you'll hit the bullseye, they must be the wealthiest tennis organisation in the world but produced mediocre results with Chief execs on 6 figure salaries, I think in more recent times they started to send them out of the country to more successful systems to get going, likes of Sanchez Casal has produced top drawer players routinely.

We're in a unique place right now where the two players of the last half-decade that looked likeliest to dominate both chose to detonate their own careers. Barty's shock retirement was a punch to the gut for the sport but everyone has the right to make their own life choices. Osaka knocking her own momentum off the rails to dance on the roofs of various bandwagons looks pretty crazy right now because as has been pointed out she's super-marketable. 

Somebody needs to step up and be the new WTA force. I think a good absolute minimum standard is Sharapova's five with a win at every slam, (which rules out Iga who won't be winning on grass and has just been I suspect on a heater in a year of weird heaters). This is Osaka's biggest silliness of course. She took her eye off the ball before she'd won slams on more than one surface. It's obviously possible she'll reach a slam final again but I seriously doubt it.

I think there are some serious prospects to fill the void but they are all 16 to 19 right now and a cursory look at the ages of the top 100 would suggest that patience is required and there may be as much as a five year wasteground without a real force at the top of the tree.

Actually that's a bit gloomy. Because there's one player in her mid 20s who I could see running off 5 or more slams across all surfaces, that's got a great mix of weapons, a good thinker/adapter, takes the ball early and is just clearly the best player of her age group to have not got past a slam SF.

She just can get a bit down on herself if things aren't going her way (more perfectionism than chokery). But if she could get the ball rolling with a slam win then yes I could see her relax a bit, focus in and scoop up a haul of them.
Also I don't think it's been mentioned on the forum but she has won the Olympics..

Is she smiley?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no

agree with a lot of that JM except I don't think Osaka is as marketable or popular as said, she has huge deals but not universally popular, someone like Raducanu has far more worldwide appeal, hopefully she can finally settle with one coach for a while because instability and insecurity is being reflected in her results, she could drop like a bomb in the rankings if she loses first round at the US Open, thankfully is 10th on the entry list.

If ever a match was to be avoided for betting purposes, its tonights "battle" between Williams and Raducanu.

probs fixed the draw to get this matchup

a clash of era's, players 21 years apart rarely meet on a tennis court, seems too good to be true that the draw spat out this match up, will enjoy it however as when Serena retires, if Emma goes on to be one of the leading players for the next 10 years or so, we'd have talked about how these two would have matched up, well now we'll know, even if they're on completely different trajectories. Reminds me of Joshua Klitschko, people beforehand were saying that even an old Klitschko would destroy Joshua, they fought and we know the result. If Federer had never played Sampras in 2001, Sampras lovers would have said that he'd of beating Fed, but they played and we got the answer. Graf/Williams was the other one, two very close matches in Sydney and Indian wells, 1-1, if they hadn't of played Graf fans would have said Steffi would have destroyed her, but we learnt in those 2 match ups in 99 that if they played 99 times, it'd be split roughly 50/50. Though Steffi was struggling to deal with the incoming power players late on in her career, against the likes of Davenport, Venus and Serena etc.

The form Emma is in, she wouldn't need to throw it to lose here.

Graf the GOAT for me.

Remember, she retired when only 30.

Btw, please don't mention Joshua in any conversations regarding greatness.

Graf was the most intimidating winner I ever watched in WTA. The question mark over her is always going to be the Seles thing. Seles was owning Graf when she got stabbed, but that's not to say Steffi couldn't/wouldn't have worked out a solution in time. It will always be a frustrating unknown.

Raducanu and Osaka share that potential reach to the Asian market but I suppose Emma also has the Disney Princess appeal.

What the tour has never quite had is a player that absolutely explodes the appeal to young women outside the bubble/sports.
I think Masha probably came the closest. Remember her trying to get a mobile phone reception on court when she won Wimbledon . She had the common touch at that point of her career.

It would be interesting to get a straw poll of players in the top 200 and ask them which player most inspired them to get into tennis. I suspect Masha and Serena/Venus would absolutely dominate that poll. (A few would obviously give the Bouchard answer 'yes she was my idol but Meldonium' )

seles won 8 slams by age 19 and 2 mths. thats frightening. she got stabbed age 19 and 5 mths, so her career got totally derailed. she would have won 20 slams no probs. she had beaten graf in 3 of the 4 slam finals they played up to the assault.
graf won 11 slams post seles assault. its a very sad affair. seles only won 1 slam when she came back.

Yeah the great "what if" of tennis.