Happy Birthday From Serena Williams

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On her 25th birthday, Carla Suárez Navarro lost to Serena Williams 6-0, 6-0.

Interview Room No. 2 is a small, drab box in the lower level of Arthur Ashe Stadium, stale-aired and windowless, containing a sad little table, a handful of chairs, and a bluish-gray carpet. A video camera hangs from the ceiling. Room No. 2 looks like the kind of room where a salty TV cop might grill a suspect. It looks like the kind of room where nothing pleasant ever happens.

It was Tuesday night, closing in on 9 p.m., and Carla Suárez Navarro of Spain was seated at the sad little table in No. 2, sunk in a chair, staring back at a small group of reporters asking her to explain what she couldn’t quite explain. Not long before, she had lost 6-0, 6-0 to Serena Williams in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open. It was a merciless thrashing. Suárez Navarro, the 18th seed, the 20th-ranked women’s tennis player in the world, had won $325,000 for getting this far in the tournament. But at the moment, she sounded like someone who had encountered a UFO.
“The games were so fast…” she said quietly. Suárez Navarro is in her mid-20s, but she looks much younger. Her close-cropped hair was still slicked with sweat. “I don’t know. I had things to do, but I couldn’t do it today.”
The match had taken 52 minutes. Suárez Navarro won five points in the first set, 18 in the whole night. She’d never gotten started. What was there to say?

Someone in the interview room wished Suarez Navarro a happy birthday. She had just turned 25.
Right. Happy Birthday.

A half-hour later, Serena Williams sat down inside the spacious Interview Room No. 1, a few steps down the corridor, with its tiered seating and blonde-wooded, stately dais. She was the second person since 1968 to win an Open quarterfinal match 6-0, 6-0—a weird stat, but one Williams shared only with Martina Navratilova.
Williams was asked if she felt any compassion for Suárez Navarro in a match like that, losing so badly on the other side. It was like asking a shark if she felt any compassion for the mackerel.

“You don’t really think about it,” Williams said. “You just think about winning the points and winning the games. That’s all you think about. You don’t think about—at least, I don’t think about anything else.”
By now these demolitions have become a ritual. Williams is unbeatable when she plays and moves like she did against Suárez Navarro, so confident and controlled, powering through matches as if they’re just mild interruptions on her calendar. She turns 32 at the end of the month and the superlatives have been exhausted: best of the decade, best of the decade before that, best of her generation…maybe just best ever? Chris Evert was on ESPN calling her “the greatest women’s tennis player we have ever seen.”

Williams deflected this talk, as she often does. This is the wise move. “I feel like I am not there yet,” she said. She cited Evert, Navratilova and Steffi Graf as “ultimate icons.”
“I just am still that girl with the racket and a dream,” she said.
It was a cute line that sounded lifted from a Cameron Crowe movie. But Williams, who has seen parts of her career interrupted by injury, knows she stands in rare company. She has 16 major tournament singles victories, two behind Evert and Navratilova, six behind Graf, eight behind Margaret Court. With her sister, Venus, she has won every doubles major. She’s only missing mixed doubles wins at Australia and the French Open; she said Tuesday she’d happily team with Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer to collect those, if possible.

“I obviously think about it,” she said. “I still have several years. I just feel so good physically and mentally.”
Melancholy had settled in at the Open since Roger Federer’s straight-sets surrender in the fourth round Monday; it felt as if a beloved tennis icon had aged in an instant. But here was another all-timer of all-timers—still vital, still the best. Nights like this, it seemed that Williams could win anything. Nights like this, she seemed unstoppable.
As 10 p.m. approached, a small gathering of tennis fans wandered through a U.S. Open souvenir shop not far from the entrance to Ashe. Among the customers inside was Carla Suárez Navarro, who’d played in that big stadium just a short while ago. She was with a group that included her mother, who was at the cash register paying for a large bag of gifts.
Suddenly, the staff behind the register began singing “Happy Birthday.” One of them said later they weren’t sure if they should, but they just went for it.
Happy Birthday to You…
Happy Birthday to You…
Suárez Navarro stood there in her sweatsuit, as if stunned. On a rough night, it was a great New York moment. This could not not have been the birthday Carla Suárez Navarro wanted, but she smiled. There was no shame. This happens. She was a tennis player who had run into history. She had run into Serena Williams.
Write to Jason Gay at Jason.Gay@wsj.com

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