NEW YORK — There is almost never a moment when Arthur Ashe Stadium is completely silent. It is too big, too vacuous. There are too many people scurrying to seats, having hushed conversations or clinking glasses filled with $22 cocktails. When tennis players come into this oversized den of concrete and steel, they know it is not supposed to be either quiet or comfortable.
And yet, as Serena Williams stepped to the line for what was probably going to be the final match of a forever career, there was no discernible sound at all. The usual din and hum of nearly 24,000 people packed into the place had melted into an eerie nothingness, as though all those sets of eyes were locked onto the one person who had the power to deliver a moment that would stay in their memory forever.
To look with that much awe and intensity at Williams at this stage of her tennis life is to wonder what’s left inside from the player she once was, to see how deep her reservoir of greatness still reaches. She announced this U.S. Open would be her final tournament because she knows how much harder it is to conjure those championship qualities at this stage of the game, how demanding it is on the body and mind, even if her tennis on occasion is still good enough to compete with the best players on the planet.
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Her body may be diminished by age and injury and all the natural things that happen at age 40, but on Friday night, everyone in the arena got one final glimpse into Williams’ sporting soul. And though she did not win the match against 46th-ranked Ajla Tomljanovic, it would be hard to call what happened over these 3 hours and 4 minutes.
The score said Tomljanovic won, 7-5, 6-7, 6-1. She’ll move on to the fourth round of the tournament. Williams will move on to retirement.
But after months, maybe years of knowing that time was running out, Williams finally felt what that was like on a tennis court Friday against a much younger player with just as much power and the guts to handle everything the New York crowd could throw at her. To even give herself a chance, Williams had to find something even greater than all the talent and determination that won her 23 Grand Slams.
What she found was the anger to push herself into one more thundering serve, one more all-out return, one more screaming forehand. And it was nearly enough. So, so nearly enough.
It was going to take a lot of things to get Williams to the finish line seven times in this tournament. If her first match was about survival of nerves and her second was about turning back the clock, Friday was about channeling the frustration of being 40 and not as good as she used to be into something that could somehow win her one more match.
Williams was upset with herself for letting the first set slip away after serving for it at 5-3. But she had no intention of accepting the sting of defeat meekly. She was too ticked off for that, anyway. If this was really the end, she was going to go out swinging — literally.
And though it didn’t end the way almost anybody in Ashe Stadium wanted, Williams final angry push made this an epic that she will hopefully look back on as a fitting tribute to the championship she was and will always be.
In the end, time just wouldn’t cooperate. Neither would Tomljanovic.
Tennis matches can take a million paths, and there’s a very clear moment when this one took a route that both bolstered Williams’ legend and likely crushed her chances of playing in the U.S. Open’s second week.
For a moment, when Williams belted the ball with all the power and frustration she could muster to take a 4-0 lead in the second set, it seemed like she might have wrested control. At the very least, it was going to go into a third set where anything might happen. For the first time all night, Tomljanovic was on her heels and shaking her head.
The crowd had been roused to ecstasy. And suddenly Tomljanovic was facing a ravenous, vintage Serena who looked ready to grab this tournament like it belonged to her.
But all those long rallies, all the giant rips at the ball, all the mental fatigue of knowing what was at stake had conspired to leave Williams as vulnerable as a boxer staggering around the ring after throwing a flurry of punches that didn’t land.
When Williams put away a forehand for a 5-2 lead, fighting off a tough game where Tomljanovic threatened to break, she let out a primal scream that suggested a result much different than the one Williams ultimately had to accept.
But the next game — a 24-point marathon — was the last thing Williams needed. Had she put away the set right there, perhaps everything changes. Tomljanovic, though, just wouldn’t let it go. When she finally held serve, it was a body blow for which Williams was going to pay a physical price.
Williams ultimately won the set in a breathtaking tiebreaker, cracking a few more perfect forehands that cracked open the door of hope just a little wider. She even broke Tomljanovic’s serve in the first game of the third set for good measure.
But the damage was piling up. Williams’ competitive stamina was waning. And Tomljanovic simply would not fold.
At 5-1 in the third set, understanding the inevitable was about to happen, the crowd gave Williams one more standing ovation. And she gave them five more match points fought off in another game of spellbinding determination and grit before finally yielding.
There was no disgrace in ending it this way. Williams was terrific, epic really. Tomljanovic was younger, a tiny bit better and most of all unrelenting in the biggest moment of her career. There is never an easy way to say goodbye. But short of holding a trophy, seeing Williams dig as deep as she could one more time turned that eerie silence into an indescribable burst of energy that can never be erased.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Dan Wolken on Twitter @DanWolken
