July 05, 2008

Williams Defeats Williams for Wimbledon Crown: For the first time since 2001, Venus Williams defeated her younger sister Serena in a Grand Slam final, taking her fifth Wimbledon championship in two sets 7-5 and 6-4. Their career record against each other is now even at 8-8. Although a sportswriter described past Williams vs. Williams finals as underwhelming and error-prone, this was a dramatic match that included the fastest serve ever by a woman at Wimbledon: Venus' 129-mph ace in the second set.

posted by rcade to tennis at 10:55 AM - 9 comments

Was the outcome ever in doubt? I knew Williams had it in the bag.

posted by HATER 187 at 01:56 PM on July 05, 2008

That was a fantastic match. I usually dread the all Williams finals because they tend to be so boring. What I liked the most was the Serena sulking afterward. They clearly both wanted to win this.

posted by bperk at 09:08 AM on July 07, 2008

What I liked the most was the Serena sulking afterward. "Sulking" is the word the media used, for reasons that I don't understand. Sulking? She wanted to win and was not overjoyed about losing. A man in the same situation would be called "intense" or "competitive" or something else with a positive spin. If Serena had taken a lah-di-dah attitude toward the match, people would have slammed her for not really wanting to win; since she did want to win, I guess she's "sulking" because she didn't do backflips with joy over losing.

posted by lil_brown_bat at 01:45 PM on July 07, 2008

I'm with lbb on that one. Serena just lost the Wimbledon final, I don't expect her to be jumping for joy. When you put as much into a match as these players do, not coming away with a victory must be difficult.

posted by Ying Yang Mafia at 02:25 PM on July 07, 2008

I thought she was sulky, especially when Venus was being her charming best saying that her most important job was being a big sister and she takes that job very seriously. No reaction from Serena. And, you can't really call it all the bigger, more dramatic words that we can use for Federer's reaction (inconsolable?) because she had a short time to get over it and compete with her sister to win the Doubles Final.

posted by bperk at 02:49 PM on July 07, 2008

I don't think Serena sulked at all after the match. She was disappointed, but was gracious in how she talked about Venus in the post-match interview on the court -- which has to be one of the toughest interviews to do in sports.

posted by rcade at 03:19 PM on July 07, 2008

And, you can't really call it all the bigger, more dramatic words that we can use for Federer's reaction (inconsolable?) because she had a short time to get over it and compete with her sister to win the Doubles Final. That doesn't make any sense to me at all.

posted by lil_brown_bat at 03:48 PM on July 07, 2008

It's okay. I am probably making no sense whatsoever. Serena's reaction was more low key than Roger's reaction. Serena was fine after a couple of hours whereas Roger seemed like he probably cried himself to sleep, so she wasn't inconsolable or anything dramatic like that.

posted by bperk at 04:04 PM on July 07, 2008

Ah, right, now I get it. Well, it's been a few years since Serena chainsawed through the majors, and she was never as dominant as Federer has been...so, yeah, she's been there before (re: losing in a final) and has subsequently come back to win again, and I don't know that Federer has. She's probably a good bit more philosophical about the whole thing.

posted by lil_brown_bat at 09:19 PM on July 07, 2008

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