NEW YORK — And just like that, it’s all over.
Perhaps the most dominant women tennis player of all time broke millions of hearts when she lost in her bid to become the first women’s player to win the calendar year tennis Grand Slam in 25 years when she lost to Roberta Vinci, 6-2, 4-6, 4-6.
At 34 years old, Serena’s is still the world’s No. 1 ranked player, but she may have lost her best chance to win all four majors in the same year since the legendary German-born player Steffi Graf, who performed the feat at 19 years old in 1988. Serena also failed in her quest to tie Graff with 22 majors overall, which would have been good for second place all time behind Margaret Court’s 24.
Williams could not intimidate nor outclass the elder statesman of tennis, a 32-year-old Italian-born Vinci, the world’s 43rd-ranked player who is playing in her first Grand Slam event at this late stage in her career. Vinci snaps Serena Williams’ 33 straight Grand Slam and 26 straight US Open victories.
It seemed, however, that Williams had gotten back control of the match after easily dispatching Vinci in the first set, a 6-2 throttling, only to see Vinci come back with force in the second set to take it 6-4.
When Williams went up 2-0 in the first and final set, everyone in Arthur Ashe stadium and the millions watching around the world assumed that Serena would endure and succeed onto the U.S. Open finals this weekend.
Vinci, however, had other ideas.