Tennis
U.S. Open
FLUSHING MEADOWS, N.Y. — It is the tennis match that no one wants to talk about. Not Serena Williams, the greatest tennis player of the modern era, who has metamorphosed into a titan of business. Not Patrick Mouratoglou, her longtime coach, who likes to talk about anything — especially if it involves tennis and his time with her.
Williams, 43, accomplished everything in her tennis career. She won 23 Grand Slam singles titles and an Olympic gold medal, with 73 singles titles in all. She spent more than 300 weeks as world No. 1, including 186 in a row.
Everything, but for the thing that awaited her a decade ago, in September 2015. She arrived in New York for the U.S. Open on the doorstep of the sport’s crown jewel: the Calendar Grand Slam of winning all four major titles in a single year. She had held all four twice before, including during that summer of 2015, when she had become a force of nature at 33 despite a patchwork of injuries, but now she was seven wins away from just about the only thing another woman had done that she had not. Steffi Graf, who was finishing her career as Williams was starting hers, did it in 1988, adding an Olympic singles gold medal to make it a Golden Slam.
