The defeat in the final was just a blip in Serena Williams’s extraordinary Wimbledon campaign

Ten months ago, Serena Williams could barely walk to her mailbox. She barely made it alive whilst delivering her baby girl. For weeks, she was in bed. For months, tennis missed her. Four Grand Slams she was forced to skip. The next one she played, she was out injured. All this made Serena’s campaign at Wimbledon this year uncertain.

Yet, there she was, in the middle of the Centre Court, clad in white, fighting back bittersweet tears, telling the world that she has so much to look forward to, that she’s “just getting started”.

Serena went down in straight sets to a magnificent Angelique Kerber (who also celebrated own comeback story) in the final on Saturday. But her journey to make the final of the tournament that she first won as a 21-year-old testifies her status as perhaps the sport’s greatest champion.

There was a debate about her getting seeded 25th despite being ranked 181st in the world. Even she was surprised (pleasantly) with the seeding. But, Serena, as she’s often done in her almost two-decade-long career, steamrollered her way into the final, dropping just one set. That some of the top seeds fell early helped her cause, but as the tournament progressed, she kept improving.

“Every single match I play, whether I’m coming back from a baby or surgery, it doesn’t matter, these young ladies, they bring a game that I’ve never seen before,” she said in the middle of the tournament.

“It’s interesting because I don’t even scout as much because when I watch them play, it’s a totally different game than when they play me.”

“That’s what makes me great: I always play everyone at their greatest, so I have to be greater.”

It’s astonishing that Serena, at 36, can manage this. That she can will her body and mind to raise her level a notch higher than that of her opponent’s. Her dominance before pregnancy might, for some of us, take away the weight of her journey to the final. For, we have taken it for granted that Serena will just enter the court and blow the opponents away. And, for this, Serena should blame herself: she didn’t look like a woman, who’s returned after surviving a life-threatening surgery; she was once again the superwoman, who’d won six of her previous 10 Grand Slams before announcing her pregnancy.

The sacrifices (there are a lot that Serena’s made throughout her life) she makes now – after becoming a mother – are far greater than the ones she’s made before. She was, for instance, on a strict vegan diet to lose the weight that she’d gained during pregnancy. She had to stop breastfeeding her daughter so she could lose more weight. Last week, she missed her daughter’s first steps because she was training. She’d later tweeted that she cried.

Others might have taken her victories in this year’s Wimbledon for granted. But not her. For being able to cross these hurdles, to hold her racquet again and contest in the highest level of the sport, Serena’s grateful.

“I was still pregnant at this time last year. That’s something I have to keep reminding myself,” she said. To hear people say, ‘Oh, she’s a favorite.’ Like, the last 16 months, I’ve played in four tournaments and was carrying another human half that time. It’s not frustrating, but it’s like, ‘C’mon, guys, this is pretty awesome.’”

So, despite her straight-sets defeat in the final to Kerber, who’s winning a Grand Slam after 22 months, Serena has done incredibly well.

“Wow, I have got a lot of work to do,” she said after going down to Naomi Osaka in the first round of Miami Open towards the end of March. She, then, was still finding her feet after her return to tennis.

From there to be able to play the final of Wimbledon in a span of three months, Serena has covered a lot of ground at an incredible speed despite suffering another injury during the French Open.

No wonder then that Kerber, in her post-match speech on Saturday said “I’m sure you will have your next Grand Slam title soon.”

These weren’t just words of obligatory appreciation, it was an assessment of a player, who had to survive 125 mph aces to rightfully lay her hands on the Venus Rosewater Dish for the first time.