SERENA RETURNS FROM RICHARD EVANS, INDIAN WELLS BY RICHARD EVANS

Written by: Staff on 14th March 2015

SERENA RETURNS FROM RICHARD EVANS, INDIAN WELLS BY RICHARD EVANS

epaselect epa04661490 Serena Williams of the US reacts during her second round match against Monica Niculescu of Romania at the BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament in Indian Wells, California, USA, 13 March 2015. Serena Williams is returning to play at India Wells after boycotting the tournament for 14 years. EPA/JOHN G. MABANGLO |

It is good to bury a piece of the past when it has not been good to you. With the help of some 14,000 people on a balmy night under a desert sky at Indian Wells, Serena Williams let go of 14 years of hurt and found love instead.

It came pouring down the from the stands after the initial roar of welcome, urging, pleading with Serena to find her game in the face of a puzzling challenge from a very unorthodox opponent in Romania’s Monica Niculescu. A final score of 7-5, 7-5 hardly begins to tell of the struggle Serena faced as she tried to overcome the twin problems of her own nerves and an opponent whose under-spun chopped forehands made the ball dip and swerve and do things that a tennis ball is rarely asked to do. Maybe Monica had watched her genius of a countryman Ilie Nastase play when she was a kid because there was more than a bit of Nasty in the racket skills she displayed.

It was a nightmare for Serena who was desperate for a fast, straight ball that she could hit with freedom. Instead she was having to generate all her own pace and, with no rhythm and leaden footwork, the errors kept coming, causing her to lose the first two games of the match and almost the third as well as she fought off a couple of break points.

There were actually three aces in that third came and still she struggled. “I was just telling myself ‘You’re not going to lose this match, you’re just going to have to find a solution.’” And she had to repeat it frequently because her opponent, seemingly unfazed by the noise and the emotion of the moment, kept on slicing and dicing balls back over the net, taunting and tempting the great champion, never giving an inch.

Serena Williams at the BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament in Indian Wells. Photo by Alejandro Gonzalez.

Niculescu, who had beaten sister Venus in the final of Florianapolis in 2013, said she was happy that she could play her game. “Yea, surprisingly I felt good on the court even though I had so many emotions when I saw the crowd standing up at the start.”

Not everyone was in their seats in the beginning but about 9,000 people rose to make a noise of twice that number as the world No 1 returned to a court that had seen her leave in tears as a confused 19-year-old in 2001 after a section of the crowd had racially taunted her and her family as she won her second Indian Wells crown.

Tournament founder Charlie Pasarell and chairman Ray Moore had pleaded with Serena to return over the intervening years but only in the last few months had she felt able to think of forgiveness and, even as the last minutes ticked by before match time, she was fretting about just what the crowd’s reaction would be.

Asked if the tears that flowed as she walked on court were tears of pride or joy, a very calm and dignified Serena peered out at the media from under the peak of a red cap afterwards and said, “I think they were tears of…..I was just overwhelmed. At that moment I just felt so good to be out there. I felt like I had made the right decision and I knew I wanted to do it. I knew I really wanted to do it. But up to that moment I didn’t really know if it was the right thing for me to do. I feel like that’s when I felt it was the right thing. And receiving the love from the crowd here, it really meant a lot to me.”

Although it is easy to get carried away with hyperbole on occasions like this, Serena’s re-appearance here at the BNP Paribas Open actually carries greater significance than just a tennis match. I have observed American struggle with its race relations for the past five decades – riots in Newark and Detroit; the assassination of Martin Luther King – the steps forward toward greater equality and acceptance and the election of an African American President. But in recent months there appears to have been a regression with the numerous killings of black men by police across America and, particularly, the riots in Ferguson. The damning report on endemic racial prejudice on the part of the Ferguson Police Department only confirmed what we suspected – that some things haven’t changed and that there is still so much work to be done.

One could say this has nothing to do with Serena Williams but the fact is that her absence here for 14 years had everything to do with the wrong attitudes towards race and, now, the heartfelt acclamation of her return from a crowd that was 90% white sends out a small but not insignificant signal that some things have improved and that we really can continue to grow and mature as a society.

“It’s been a wonderful day for me, for women’s tennis, for tennis in general and for everyone,” she said.

And so it was.

Topics: BNP Paribas Open, Indian Wells, Monica Niculescu, Richard Evans, Serena Williams, Tennis

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10sBalls_com says:

March 14, 2015 at 1:00 pm

-@serenawilliams RETURNS FROM RICHARD EVANS, #IndianWells BY @Ringham7- http://t.co/fJspKIwKTi #tennis #BNPPO15 #indianwellstennis #Serena