It’s Serena’s World, and She’s Living It Up

Serena Williams has become the most compelling female athlete in the world, a master of both her sport and her public, a woman of extraordinary physical strength and charismatic personality.

She is an African American woman unafraid to become a stunning blond and to wear pink. She is able to knock the fuzz off tennis balls and Saturday night she was willing to reduce her older sister, Venus Williams, to tennis rubble.

“My backhand is great now,” Serena would say after beating Venus, 6-4, 6-3, in the final of the U.S. Open. “I want you to know that.”

We know. We also know that right now Serena, 20, owns women’s tennis with her backhand, her forehand, her crafty serving and her unending smile.

Before the Open, Serena had made herself substantially better than all the other women not named Williams. And on this night, filled with more music, more singing, more pomp than tennis, Serena also proved that she has become substantially better than her sister.

It took Serena only 1 hour 12 minutes to finish off Venus, 22. Serena was not afraid of thumping her sister, of walloping forehands at Venus’ stomach, of slamming overheads at Venus’ feet.

By the second set, the record crowd of 23,164 was trying to whisper its cheers for Serena so as not to make Venus feel so bad.

But for a twisted ankle that kept her out of the Australian Open, Serena might have been receiving congratulations as the first woman to sweep the four Grand Slam tournaments since Steffi Graf in 1988.

Now she is talking about the “Serena Slam,” which would match the “Tiger Slam.” Serena, who won her fourth Grand Slam title and became only the sixth woman to win three straight Slams, is planning to win the 2003 Australian Open and hold close to her heart all four trophies together.

It seems hard to imagine, after the way Serena dominated this Open, that anything other than an injury could stop her.

The Serena we’ve seen here for two weeks has been wisely analytical about her game, intelligently aware of the world around her and charmingly insouciant about the host of silly questions that were tossed at her about clothing, hairstyles and other girlish things.

This Serena was gracious after every win and unwilling to admit that she has stepped significantly ahead of her sister, a kindness that Venus surely appreciated.

So often athletes are spoken of as role models and too often they fall woefully short of such expectations.

This Serena is going to make a very good role model.

On Friday, when baseball great Henry Aaron came to the women’s semifinals, Serena was asked if she had grown up admiring Aaron. So many young athletes in many sports, even baseball, would have looked up blankly and said no, or even worse, professed not to have heard of Aaron.

“I can’t say I really knew at the time,” Serena said, “but obviously I know who he is. I really, really do admire Hank Aaron. I was watching a program about him a while back. I’ve read a lot of things about him. That’s really cool.”

Six years ago, before Venus and Serena were full-time members of the women’s tour, Richard Williams, the girls’ father and coach, sat in a tennis club outside Chicago and said, quite seriously, that Serena was going to be the better player and bigger champion.

As he has been about so many things having to do with his talented daughters, Richard has turned out to be right.

Venus came here reaching for her third consecutive U.S. Open title. But she also arrived here having lost both the French Open and Wimbledon finals to her little sister. In the fourth round Venus was nearly beaten by Chanda Rubin in a two-hour match played at an incredible pace.

“My game went down after that fourth round,” Venus said. “I just couldn’t do a thing to bring it back up. Before, in the first, second and third rounds, I was playing great. But after that, I just couldn’t do anything to bring it back.”

Venus was pushed to three sets and two hours in the semifinals, too, by Amelie Mauresmo. Like Rubin, Mauresmo challenged Venus at the net and put constant pressure on her.

What has happened at this Open is that instead of the Big Two, we have the Only One. Venus has become just another challenger, like Mauresmo, Lindsay Davenport and Jennifer Capriati, another competitor sent home to find some new gear to keep up with Serena.

In a note that sounded almost as if it were surrender, Venus said that Serena very much enjoys the hubbub and attention that goes with being No. 1. “I don’t like it much,” said Venus, who lost her No. 1 ranking to Serena after Wimbledon. “She’s more of an outgoing person, maybe, than what I am. Everyone has their year and this is her year. And next year could be her year also.”

That’s how Serena is thinking. Instead of feeling sorry about the bad ankle that kept her out of the 2002 Australian Open, Serena found the upside. “Maybe it was meant to happen this way,” she said. “Because now when I go to Australia I can just gain tons of [ranking] points. So I just start over. I’m still young.”

Young but wise and talented and smiling the biggest smile you’ve ever seen.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.

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Weeks at No. 1

A look at the players who have held the No. 1 ranking in women’s tennis and the total number of weeks (non-consecutive) each one spent there. All numbers date from Nov. 3, 1975 through this week.

*--* PLAYER (COUNTRY) WEEKS Steffi Graf* (GER) 378 Martina Navratilova (USA) 331 Chris Evert (USA) 262 Martina Hingis (SUI) 209 Monica Seles (USA) 178 Lindsay Davenport (USA) 37 Tracy Austin (USA) 22 Jennifer Capriati (USA) 18 Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario (ESP) 12 Venus Williams (USA) 11 Serena Williams (USA) 8 * Record for most career weeks at No. 1, man or woman

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