When I imagine Venus Williams on the court, I see her standing on the baseline, taking the ball early, hitting it hard and deep and flat. Or I think of her scrambling, her compact swing generating surprising power, her long legs almost flailing as they fly. I think of her high service toss, or the intensity with which she stares at the ball as she lines up a shot, or the coiled energy in her crouch as she pulls back her racquet. Pushed into a corner, she takes a wild swing and sends the ball, somehow, with perfect accuracy into the opposite spot. I think, too, of the way her feet can slow, and the way energy can seem to drain out of her in the course of a single game, or how it can be absent from the start. I also think of the way she fights.
When I watched her quarter-final match, against Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, in this year's Australian Open, though, what I noticed was the way she closed. At every chance, she stepped inside the baseline. Some of her shots were shanked, but she brushed the errors off. She turned groundstrokes into half-volleys. She hit forehands off the service line and took balls out of the air. Normally, despite having good hands, she doesn’t volley much, but, against Pavlyuchenkova, Williams came into net sixteen times. In her 6–4, 7–6 (3) win, she won thirteen of those points. The court in Rod Laver Arena is fast, and the balls are light. Williams went for her shots. In a tight tiebreak, she won the last four points.
It has been a long time since Williams’s first appearance at the Australian Open, in 1998, and a long time since she last made the semifinals in Melbourne, in 2003. In 2011, dealing with the effects of Sjogren’s syndrome, an autoimmune disorder, she fell out of the Top 100. Williams is thirty-six years old now, and playing in her record-setting seventy-fourth major. She has had an easy draw, but she has taken advantage. Through five matches at the Australian Open, she has not lost a set.
Last summer, during a run to the semifinals at Wimbledon, Williams was asked if she was surprising herself. “The first time you win, nobody picks you; the last time you win, nobody picks you,” she said. “You’ve just got to pick yourself.”
This Australian Open has been remarkable for its comebacks. There is the resurgence of Roger Federer, who missed much of last season, and the stunning run of Rafael Nadal, who has been struggling with chronic injuries and persistent self-doubt, but who has, so far, showed his old tenacity instead of his recent timidity on the most important points. Then there is Grigor Dimitrov, who was tapped early as a champion but whose career seemed in danger of falling apart. Now he’s in the semifinals as well. Even the story of Venus’s sister Serena involves overcoming a life-threatening pulmonary embolism.
The most incredible story of all is that of Serena’s competitor in the semifinals, Mirjana Lučić-Baroni, who won her last match at the Australian Open in 1998. Lučić-Baroni fled Croatia not long after, escaping a father she claims was emotionally and verbally abusive. For years, she could not finance her tennis career; she barely played at all. Between the 2002 U.S. Open and 2010’s Wimbledon, she did not appear in the main draw of a major. Unsponsored, she trains on public courts in Florida.
Venus’s story is less dramatic, certainly. Perhaps that is part of the reason that she is, as ever, overlooked. She is no longer defined by her seven major titles, or by the power of her serve, or even by her sister—even though, I believe, there is no Serena without Venus. She has been known, lately, for her age, and for sticking around.
She is not always treated as a champion. At Wimbledon, the tournament organizers have a curious tendency to put the five-time winner on Court 3, while putting less decorated players on Centre Court. At the French Open, and even in New York, she is sometimes shunted to a lesser spot. It’s true that, these days, Williams is as likely to lose in the first round as she is to make it far. But she has also played in a few of the best matches of the past two years.
Tonight, she takes on CoCo Vandeweghe, an unseeded player from California with a huge kick serve, a brash confidence, and a forehand that whistles when she hits it true. It’s a low-percentage shot, but, so far, she’s been hitting it right. If Williams can make it past Vandeweghe, there’s a good chance that her opponent in the final will be her sister. It would be a fitting end to the tournament; it would seem like a fitting close to a career.
Venus refuses to think that way, she says. She steps onto the court. She moves forward. “I think I was born to play this game; I really do,” she said a few days ago. “I’ve been blessed enough to do something that I love, and I think this was my calling because I grew so big, and so tall, that I can cover the court and hit it hard.”
That is part of the myth of the Williams sisters, of course: they were born to play. I have always seized on the signs of resistance to that narrative, though—the self-assertion that both sisters frequently show. As I’ve watched Venus in Australia, that inner drive has been more evident than ever. She has been playing on her own terms. Why stop now?