Serena Williams had to withdraw from Wimbledon with an injury, which happened after a nasty slip on the grass. People have been falling left and right. I associate sliding around with the clay courts, and you do occasionally see it on the grass, but not usually this number of cringeworthy near-injuries — or in Serena’s case, an actual one. Bianca Andreescu, I believe, had the charitable take that people simply are rusty on grass because Wimbledon was cancelled last year, and maybe that’s true. But it was tough seeing Serena cry as she walked to the net. It also does make wonder if she’d thought of this as her last year (she was very emotional after losing in Sydney) and she’s now confronting either going out this way, or going one more to try and end on a higher note. We’ll see. I think she has more in the tank, but as we’ve seen with Federer, it does also get hard when your opponents stop being afraid of playing you and start seeing you as beatable. The intimidating mystique really helps. Mostly, I just hate the way they cover Serena post-motherhood and I hope she has one more in her, so that we can lay to rest this idea that having a baby dents both ambition and ability. Ugh.
