Of course, I am referring to Serena Williams. And of course, she’s not from our Ajegunle; she’s from one of the countless “Ajegunles” of America, the town of Compton in California. After official, legal and all-determining racial segregation ended in the United States and the number of middle class professional African Americans grew exponentially, something of historic significance happened to Black neighborhoods to create ghetto communities like Compton. What was this event or phenomenon?
Well, most of the members of the newly created Black middle class left their communities and moved into either all-Black or integrated suburbs. Those who remained, those who could not leave either because they were poor or had little education, found themselves in communities now deprived of the services and amenities associated with the presence and interests of middle and upper classes. From that moment, something crucial entered the politics of race in America. That something was the reality and awareness of class. In other words, class division within African Americans became a very important factor in African American affairs, expressed in terms of who lived where and what privileges and amenities attached to one’s community of domicile. This happened all over the country, but most especially in a state like California, the most affluent state in America. Affluence always goes with its opposite, poverty, and that’s the significance of a place like Compton, the American “Ajegunle” from which Serena and her sister, Venus Williams, came. But what does all this have to do with the subject of this essay?
I am writing this piece on Friday, September 7, 2018. By the time that it is published on Sunday, September 9, 2018, Serena would probably have won her 24th Grand Slam singles victory in the US Open of 2018. Last night, Thursday, September 6, 2018, Serena won a crushing victory of Anastasija Sevastova of Latvia in the semi-finals. Serena has played and won more Grand Slam singles semi-finals in the so-called Open Era than any other tennis player, male or female. Far more importantly, she has won more singles finals than any other player in this same “Open Era” that started fifty yeas ago in 1968. On the basis of that achievement, I am arguing that even before the finals tomorrow when she may win her 24th singles Grand Slam victory, Serena has already earned the right to the greatest acronym in tennis history, this being GOAT.
This acronym, by the way, has nothing to do with the well-known mammalian quadruped of that name; rather it means, Greatest of All Time. Now, it is true that a few influential commentators and pundits of tennis history have already begun to declare Serena as the GOAT of the sport. But they are a very small minority. For most of the pundits, commentators, aficionados and historians of tennis, Serena will become GOAT only when and if she wins her 24th Grand Slam victory. Why? Because Margaret Court, the Australian turned American, has 24 Grand Slam singles victories to her credit. And on that basis, as of this historic moment, Court has the highest number of Grand Slams victories: she has 24 while Serena has 23. Ergo, Serena must reach 24 not only to equal Court but to achieve the uniqueness of having won all her victories in the Open Era while Margaret court won most of her victories prior to the emergence of the Open Era. This issue is at the heart of my observations and reflections in this essay.
These days, when commentators and pundits write about the difference between the Open Era and the long, long period before it, they make light of the tectonic difference between the two periods. All they say is that before the Open Era, only amateurs were allowed to play in the four Grand Slams, the Australian, the French, the US, and the French; professional players were disqualified from participation in them. This meant that in order to continue to be qualified to play in any of these Grand Slams, you had to remain a non-professional amateur for all your playing life. In fairness to most of those who underestimate the significance of the difference between the Pre-Open Era (POE) and the Open Era (OE), it must be noted that they do admit that in the POE, the field of contestants was vastly restricted. But beyond that, they barely ever talk of the racial, class and ethnic dimensions of that restriction. For the truth of the matter is that for much of the more than a century of the history of the Grand Slams, only Whites – and of a mostly affluent background – could afford to regard competitive tennis as a matter only and exclusively for non-professional amateurs precisely because they had money and didn’t have to depend or live on the prize monies of the Grand Slams. In plain language, competitive tennis in the POE was overwhelmingly an all-White, country club affair that shut out all other racial and class demographics from the competition. In other words, let us say that we are talking here of periods in tennis history that were segregationist and post-segregationist, even if that term was never directly used.
Back to the issue of who is the GOAT of tennis history now, before the finals of US Open 2018. Is it Margaret Court or Serena Williams? Let us consider the following facts. Of her 24 Grand Slam singles victories, Court won 13 of them in the POE, winning only 11 in the OE. Similarly, of all her singles titles of 192 in all competitions,100 of them were won in the POE when the competition was highly restricted. Meanwhile it is noteworthy to state that 11 of Margaret Court’s total singles Grand Slams victories of 24 were won at one of the four Grand Slams, this being the Australian Open. This is is not only her “native” Grand Slam, in the Pre-Open Era, it attracted the lowest number of competitors in the period because it was considered so far away that only few people could afford the expenses entailed in competing in it. To all these facts and figures, let us consider Serena Williams’ achievement, all in the Open Era when all restrictions to competition had gone forever.
Serena’s longevity and staying power in competitive tennis is unsurpassed by anybody, male or female. She is the only player in tennis history, male or female, to win all the four grand slams over the course of two decades – and still counting. She is also the oldest player to hold all the slams in one year (2014-2015). She is the only player in history, male or female, to win three of the four slams 6 times. Second only to Martina Navratilova, Serena is one of two players to have won two of the four slams over the course of three decades. With 2018 close to the end of the current decade, she may very well become the only player in history to win slams over the course of four decades, a feat that simply boggles the mind. In combination with her sister Venus, she has outpaced every other pair of sisters that ever played the game of tennis in all categories – singles, doubles and mixed doubles. And between them, Serena and Venus have won more Olympics Gold and Silver Medals, again in both singles and doubles. And let us remember that this is all in the Open Era while the majority of Margaret Court’s also extremely impressive achievements were before the Open Era.
At this point in the discussion, it is important to allude to the fact that before the possibility of Serena catching up and perhaps even surpassing the record of Margaret Court became real and imminent, the achievements and records of the Open Era used to be kept separate and distinct from those of the Pre-Open Era – as they very well should be! In concrete terms, commentators and pundits, by an overwhelming majority, used to refer to Margret Court and Steffi Graff quite separately: Graff’s 22 singles victories were kept distinct from Court’s 23 victories. In other words, as Serena went over number 20 in her singles victories, everyone said that catching up with and surpassing Graff was what she needed to become the GOAT of tennis history. But no sooner had she achieved that goal was the goalpost moved to – Margaret Court. The differences between the two eras were obliterated and Margaret Court was nominally elevated to a title and a nomenclature which nobody had hitherto ever applied to her. She became the GOAT – a player who had won most of her victories when the field of competition was severely restricted and, moreover, had won the lion’s share of those victories at the Australian Open, her home or “native” slam!
Like football (soccer), competitive tennis had its origins in Europe. And like the dominance of European football in the world, to a large extent European tennis is dominant in competitive world tennis. But then, think of this: with the single exception of Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal, which commentator or pundit of soccer would look to Europe for the world’s greatest player of all time? How many, if any, would think to give the achievements of European master footballers the same weight as the achievements of Pele or Maradona as arguably the greatest footballer of all time? The same logic, the same consideration applies to world or global tennis competition: when it moved out of its narrow racial and regional enclave, it entered a different history. Therefore, it no longer makes sense to compare the achievements and records of one age to those of the other more globally inclusive and less restricted and restrictive history. In plain language, Margaret Court and Serena Williams belong to ages or eras of tennis history and it is unproductive in the extreme to compare their achievements.
This is the point at which our opening allusion to Ajegunle needs a further elaboration, no matter how brief. Like our own Ajegunle, Serena’s Compton used to be thought of as a trap, a dead zone of possibilities for its residents, especially the young. But as we all know, many of our best footballers and other team sports have come from the Ajegunles of the country. The obvious point or moral of this profile is, of course this: in our age, our epoch, we have seen extraordinary manifestations of creativity, skill and talent sprouting from the most deprived and marginalized of our ghettos. That is Serena’s background. But there is far more to the matter than this. Serena and her sister, Venus, not only brought a different style and presence to their sport, they transformed some its most conservative and ethnocentric values and practices. They encountered all kinds of racial, gender and ethnocentric biases and prejudices in their sport and they fought fearlessly and wisely against them, Venus especially but also Serena, in her own more nuanced ways.
Tomorrow, Saturday, September 8, 2018, Serena will probably reach that figure of 24. Her chances are quite good against the much younger Naomi Osaka. But in the end, it does not really matter. Serena is already the GOAT. Osaka, by her own admission, owes her entry to competitive tennis to Serena and her sister, Venus. Osaka is half Haitian and half Japanese. She is thus a link in the long chain of expansion and diversity that entered tennis history with the transition from the Pre-Open Era to the Open Era, a link that owes it existence and global reach to the Williams sisters. It all began at Compton.
