The Williamses launched their careers in Arthur Ashe Stadium. Now, Serena will try to make it feel like a “giant heartbeat” one more time
For parts of four decades, Williams has put her share of heart, soul, joy, tears—and resilience—into that vast arena.
When Venus and Serena Williams were young, their father, Richard, asked them which “big ones”—i.e., Grand Slam tournaments—they wanted to win. The low-key Venus said Wimbledon. Naturally, her more excitable younger sister opted for the US Open.
Venus almost nabbed Serena’s favorite event in 1997, when she reached the final in New York as a 17-year-old before losing to Martina Hingis. It was an historic occasion for at least two reasons: Venus was the first Black player to compete in the US Open final since Arthur Ashe made it that far in 1972, and she did it in a brand-new stadium named after Ashe himself. Two weeks before, the 23,000-seat arena—still the largest in the sport, 25 years later—had been christened by an enthusiastic Whitney Houston, who sang “One Moment in Time” to a cavalcade of celebrities.
In 1999, though, it was Serena who made her Grand Slam dream come true first. After Hingis squeaked past Venus in the semifinals, Serena took care of the top seed in straight sets for the first of her 23 major singles titles. She and her sister became the first stars to launch their careers in Ashe, and they were among those who did the most to put some heart and soul into the concrete-and-steel behemoth.
At the time, Ashe felt like a quantum leap for tennis, and a fitting tribute to one of the best and most important people in tennis history. But it also felt a bit…big. Watching two people play a match from the top rows was a little like watching from one of the airplanes that used to roar over the Flushing Meadows grounds. Not only was the stadium one-third larger than Wimbledon’s Centre Court, it also came with two rows of luxury suites that pushed the upper deck that much higher into the air.
The upper deck also happened to be the one place where a regular fan could find an available and relatively affordable seat. It wasn’t a coincidence that when people talked about what they loved most about the Open, they mentioned walking around the side courts and seeing the action from up close. Ashe became a home base, and a place to get a distant glimpse of the best players when they appeared, but the real fun was elsewhere.
Andre Agassi described the sound in Ashe as a combination of a “jet engine and a giant heartbeat."
As time went on, though, an upside to all of these seats became apparent: A sold-out Ashe generated more noise than any other tennis stadium, by a lot. Traditionally, noise has been a no-no in tennis, but in this case it translated into a tidal wave of emotion that came crashing down onto the court. I remember first feeling that wave during Todd Martin’s late-night comebacks in 1999 and 2000, but it was Andre Agassi who inspired the most powerful pandemonium of all, with his win over Martin in the ’99 final, but especially with his epic five-setters against James Blake in 2005 and Marcos Baghdatis in 2006. The latter was the final win of his career.
After those experiences, Agassi described the sound in Ashe as a combination of a “jet engine and a giant heartbeat."
Over the years, I remembered those words while watching Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Juan Martin del Potro elicit similarly powerful waves of love. As for Venus, she said she didn’t feel fully at home at her home Slam until 2012. But the Williams sisters have felt the roar for the last decade—as well as the hush. I’ve never heard 23,000 people go so suddenly, dramatically silent as the fans in Ashe did when Venus missed a crucial shot in a close fourth-round loss to Karolina Pliskova in 2016. Two years earlier, Sara Errani was driven half out of her mind while playing Venus in Ashe.
“I heard the crowd, never heard the crowd like that strong,” Errani said. “I was shaking for the crowd. Was unbelievable good. I think I will remember forever that moment."
Serena, of course, has had some of her most famous and infamous moments in Ashe. She was defaulted from the 2009 semifinals against Kim Clijsters. She sparred with chair umpire Eva Asderaki in the 2011 final. She had her quest for a Grand Slam stopped cold by Roberta Vinci in 2015. And we all remember how her 2018 title match against Naomi Osaka turned out.
But Serena has also inspired goose-bump moments there, including her two-tiebreaker quarterfinal win over Venus in 2008; her three-set wins over Victoria Azarenka in the 2012 and 2013 finals; her second-set comeback against Bianca Andreescu in the 2019 final; and the five matches she won in her near-Slam year of 2015. I’m not sure there’s ever been a tenser or more glamorous scene at a tennis match than the one that filled the stadium for Serena’s quarterfinal win over Venus that year.
Serena has shown her excellence in Ashe by winning six titles there, but even more than that, she has shown her other great trait: her resilience. After her default in 2009 and loss in the 2011 final, she came back and won the title the next three years. After losing to Vinci in heartbreaking fashion in 2015, she made two more finals and two more semifinals. And after her loss to Osaka in 2018, she came right back and made the final the following year.
Serena has grown up in Ashe, and has helped put some heart, soul, joy and tears into the vast concrete bowl named after her fellow Black champion. She made her entrance as a star here, and it’s only fitting that, whatever happens over the next two weeks, she’ll make her exit here, too.
