With her serve, her return, and the unrestrained athleticism of her prime years, Serena Williams changed the way women’s tennis was played.
It was Daniel Kahneman, with the American psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, who recognized that, in what and how we remember, there tends to be a cognitive bias at work. When we recollect and judge an experience—a medical procedure, a vacation, a love affair—we’re liable to overemphasize its final moments. Last impressions, good or bad, can deeply color, or discolor, our memories.
Serena Williams lost on Friday night, in a third-round match at the U.S. Open—the earliest she’d been knocked out of the tournament since 1998, when she was sixteen years old. She lost the last six games of the match. At times during those games, she looked every bit the player who will be turning forty-one in a few weeks. She watched balls heading to the corners without moving her feet. She breathed deeply through her mouth.
It may well be that what Serena’s most fervid fans remember of her last hurrah is themselves, coming together in Arthur Ashe Stadium and before television sets to screamlast hurrahs and to express how much they cared one more time. Serena’s three matches broke attendance records and attracted ratings that just aren’t seen in the first week of a tennis tournament.
How many athletes have been so vividly with us for as long as Serena has? Her longevity is no small part of what made her remarkable. She has spent twenty-seven years on tour, but there are stories and mental snapshots of her to summon from even before that run got started. TV crews trekked to Compton to film her, along with her mom and dad and sisters. As Serena said on her friend Meghan Markle’s podcast the other day, “I’ve been doing this my entire existence.
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