The anticipated retirement of Serena Williams will have to wait. At the US Open on Monday night, the 23-time major champion defeated Danka Kovinic 6-3, 6-3 to advance to the second round.
After the game, Williams told the crowd, “You know, I always just got to do the best that I can.” “I’ve never felt so at ease in front of everyone here than I do on this court.
“When I step onto the court, all I want to do is play my best game that day. That’s all I can do.
Before Williams even stepped onto the court on Monday night, the nearly 24,000-person sold-out crowd, which included a long list of A-list celebrities and notables, including former President Bill Clinton, Spike Lee, Lindsey Vonn, Rebel Wilson, Vera Wang, Mike Tyson, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Gladys Knight, Martina Navratilova, and even Coco Gauff, was standing. Williams was introduced to the crowd as the “Greatest Of All Time” to raucous cheers that persisted throughout any pauses in the action throughout the match. This came after a video narrated by Queen Latifah summarized her illustrious career.
“The reception was really overwhelming,” Williams told reporters. “It was loud and I could feel it in my chest. It was a really good feeling. It’s a feeling I’ll never forget, so I really — yeah, that meant a lot to me.”
Williams now has 366 Grand Slam victories, which is the most of any female player since the stadium opened in 1997. This victory was her 102nd at Arthur Ashe Stadium. Following the match, Williams was honored on the court with a ceremony that included Gayle King, Billie Jean King, and an Oprah Winfrey “Thank you, Serena” video.
“First of all, thanks, I didn’t expect any of this,” Williams told the crowd, before crediting the fans for pulling her through to the win.
Despite losing, Kovinic was gracious in his remarks, saying that playing Serena was “probably a once in a lifetime opportunity, especially in a night session match on Arthur Ashe,” and that it was “an experience that I could only think of and dream of maybe in my entire career.”
Following Williams’ announcement in Vogue, tickets for Monday’s night session quickly became in high demand. TickPick, a secondary ticket marketplace, reports that Monday’s night session’s admission price was the highest of any US Open women’s final in history. As of Monday morning, the average secondary market ticket cost was $987, according to the ticket analytics company TicketIQ. A US Open record of 29,402 spectators attended the night session on the grounds.
Thousands of fans crowded into even her practice before the match to get a glimpse of the legend, with rows lined up to look through a mesh fence.
Williams wasn’t quite ready to call it a career, despite the hoopla and the fact that she had dropped three of her four matches since making a comeback at Wimbledon after a year-long absence. In a dress with matching diamonds in her hair and a figure-skating motif that was originally intended to have six layers to represent each of Williams’ six US Open victories, Williams glided around the court on Monday. At the conclusion, she performed a twirl and displayed some of the skills that have made her one of the all-time greats.
In the 99-minute match, she recorded 22 wins and nine aces.
Williams has been working with Rennae Stubbs, a former player who is now a coach and analyst, this week in New York. Williams was nervous, but Stubbs said she was still preparing for the match and the tournament with her usual intensity in an interview with ABC before the match.
In addition to playing doubles with her sister Venus, whom she referred to on Monday as her “rock,” Williams will next face No. 2 seed Anett Kontaveit on Wednesday. Together, the two have won 14 major championships, most recently at Wimbledon in 2016. Since the French Open in 2018, they haven’t competed together.