Don’t forget about Serena’s legacy

Every journey, even the most beautiful one, has to come to an end. Serena Williams, at the age of 40, decided to say stop. Her last run during US Open was full of great moments but it would be to miracoulous to win the title. Serena is done with her career but her career has still a lot of lessons for all players and coaches around the world. 

The story of Williams’ sisters will be really hard to repeat in the history. It is not only what they achieved but more important is how they got to the point where they are right now. Serena went through many difficulties to reach the number of 23 Grand Slams won so it is worthy to take a deeper look at the reasons of her success.

Being able to hit the ball exceptionally well is an important factor to have a chance to become successful in tennis but to reach the level of dominating the tennis world for many years, you need more tools than just quality strokes. Tennis career is based on hundreds of factors and each of them has impact on the results of the player. (Read here about another great champion, Rafa Nadal, and his reasons to succeed for so many years). Serena proved that everything is possible and that you shouldn’t give up at any moment because you never know what waits for you around the corner. 

When we think about Serena, we think about the most visible achievements of her career. We think about being number one for 319 weeks, winning Grand Slam tournaments and being unbeatable. Of course, all these successes make an impression on us but we can’t learn anything from just these pure numbers. Over the course of her entire career, Serena Williams made actions that allowed her to lift so many trophies. That is why we should pay attention more to her actions than her results because these will allow us to improve own game and reach personal potential.

Dealing with adversities

Let’s be honest. Serena didn’t have an easy childhood. Reading the books and watching movies about her, we can quickly understand that her early years were full of stress, doubts and danger. She practiced on public courts in dangerous neighborhood so it is definitely not the environment that we see today in modern tennis centers. Additionally, because of her roots, it wasn’t easy to blend into tennis world that wasn’t ready for that in those times. Adding the fact that she has many siblings and her parents weren’t millionaires, financial restrictions were another adversity that she had to overcome on the road to become one of the best female tennis players in the history of the game.

Finding own way

Richard Williams was ambitious but also was a little bit obsessed if not to say crazy. However, this combination turned out to be the solution for many obstacles that were out of control for the family of Williams. Richard taught girls simple but really effective technique. He paid a lot of attention to the area of footwork. He made big effort to arrange the best possible environment for Serena to practice in academies. Additionally, he sticked hard to the plan and didn’t allow girls to play tournaments until they would be ready. Finding own way is crucial in individual sport and copying others without a plan rarely leads to success.

Putting pressure

Power. Screaming. Playing inside the court. These are the hallmarks of the game of Serena Williams. She definitely showed new dimension of playing professional sport. She proved that a lot of opponents can’t deal mentally and physically with constant pressure that is put on them for 2 or 3 hours in a row. She created an image of the train that is coming at you and that is why she was so difficult to beat when she was in shape.

Not caring about others’ opinions

Don’t care about others’ opinions. It is easier said than done but Serena did a great job in this area. Looking at her playing style, behavior, fashion choices or criticism, she knows that she can control only what she does. Knowing how important the mental aspect in tennis is, being skilled to leave all the comments away from our head is a really helpful tool that allows to focus on own actions without additional problems.

That’s a wrap. Serena decided to finish her career. We can speculate if she could do it earlier when she was performing much better but it is her decision that we should respect. For so many years, she gave us beautiful moments of excellent tennis performance and we should use those moments to improve our game because Serena gave to the sport something more than just results.

Marcin Bieniek is a professional tennis coach. You can contact Marcin through his personal coaching website http://marcinbieniek.info. Marcin has been working with USTA, top 50 ITF and WTA/ATP players. Author of tennis book “Tenisowy Olimp” and frequent contributor to TennisPro and TenisKlub magazines. He was a speaker at International Coaching Tennis Symposium 2016 at Hilton Head Island, USA.