Why going out on top is overrated

Serena Williams is back

Serena Williams at the 2008 Wimbledon Championships (Credit: Chris Eason)

Scrubs. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Malcolm in the Middle. Television audiences have rarely been better served by reboots. The formula is simple: take a much-loved (or at least tolerated) sitcom, throw in some contemporary social themes, diverse casting and several hundred millilitres of Botox for the original cast and voilà.

The economic drivers are just as attractive: the built-in audience, the streaming platforms desperate to pad out their content libraries and the reality that IP is more valuable than ever. The answer to any TV’s executive’s question today is basically: have you tried turning off and on again?

Of course, sport doesn’t work like that. No matter how good you once were, or how fit you are now, it is simply very difficult to outrun a 25-year-old from the vantage of middle age. Not to go all Werther’s Original, but time is undefeated. Given this, what the heck is Serena Williams doing back in tennis?

I think it’s fair to say she doesn’t need the money. Williams, 44, has a net worth of around $300m, while her husband, internet entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian, chips in with around $150m. Nor does she need the legacy. With her 23 major singles titles, Williams is widely regarded as the greatest female tennis player of all time — perhaps the greatest athlete ever.

Maybe she just loves the drama? When Williams rejoined tennis’s anti-doping pool at the end of last year, she was adamant that she was not returning to the sport, posting: “Omg yall I’m NOT coming back. This wildfire is crazy.” By January, she would only say that she would “see what happens”. More recently, she published a video in which she practiced serves on a tennis court for what she claimed was the first time in three years.

@serenaI have not done this since September 2023.

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Williams won’t returning be for the wake-up calls. I’ve never been asked to pee in a cup in front of a total stranger at five in the morning. But that’s the reality for professional tennis players who, under the “whereabouts” rules, have to inform anti-doping authorities where they will be for an hour a day, every day. As to suggestions that Williams is only returning to play doubles, former top-10 player Andrea Petkovic said words to the effect of, “no one puts up with the doping protocols just for doubles”.

Certainly, Williams is in great shape, having revealed in August that she had begun taking GLP-1 medication¹, and lost 34 pounds. Yet no matter how fit, she will not be in peak physical shape. I mean, she was born in 1981! Consequently, she opens herself up to the possibility of, well, looking silly on television.

But I feel quite strongly that few things are more overrated in sport than going out on top. You know — the walk-off home run, the last-minute winner or the heavyweight who retires undefeated. Always leave them wanting more. Don’t let them witness your decline. I hate this sort of thinking.