Serena Williams' last set: Examining the impact of one of the greatest athletes ever

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast:

With the U.S. Open coming to a close, so does the career of arguably one of the greatest tennis players, Serena Williams.

Williams is one of the most decorated and most prominent athletes of all time, winning 23 grand slam titles-second all time- and winning 14 major doubles titles all with her sister Venus-who is an all time great in her own right.

The superstar athlete recently announced she was "evolving" away from tennis.

5 Things host James Brown sat down with USA TODAY Deputy Editor Suzette Hackney and Sports Columnist Dan Wolken to discuss Williams' legacy and her impact on sports, culture and more.

Hackney shares about the time she met the Williams sisters and what their drive and strength did for her and other women, especially women of color.

To read more on Serena Williams career, click here, here and here.

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To follow Suzette Hackney on Twitter, click here.

To follow Dan Wolken on Twitter, click here.

To follow the discussion on Twitter Space, click here.

If you have a comment about the show or a question or topic you'd like us to discuss, send James Brown an email at jabrown@usatoday.com or podcasts@usatoday.com. You can also leave him a voicemail at 585-484-0339.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

James Brown: Hello and welcome to Five Things. I'm James Brown. It's Sunday, September 8th, 2022. Go Bills. Every week we take a question, an idea or concept and go deep. If there's anything you'd like us to look into, you could always email me at jaBrown@usatoday.com or at podcasts@usatoday.com. You could leave me a message at (585) 484-0339. We might have you on the show. I'm also everywhere on social media at James Brown TV.

As the US Open comes to a close, so does the tennis career of Serena Williams. She announced last month that she's evolving away from tennis. Barring a comeback, Williams leaves the sports world at 40. She's one of the most decorated and prominent athletes ever. She won 23 Grand Sam singles titles. That's second all time. In 14 major women's doubles titles, all with her sister Venus, who's an all time great in her own right. During a Twitter space, I discussed her legacy and her impact on sports, culture and much more with two USA Today columnists, Deputy editor, Suzette Hackney and sports columnist, Dan Wolken. We began with Suzette and Dan's memories of the William sisters as teenage prodigies.

Suzette Hackney: I think so often when they were coming up, so many people were talking about how powerful they were and their speed and muscle tone and athleticism and all of those things. I mean, they changed the game in that regard. You didn't see tennis players who were built like them. Not to reduce them to only their physique, but that was a huge thing. I remember thinking like, "Man, how often can I hit weights? Will I ever look like Serena Williams? No, I won't." But it was pretty amazing to witness and watch them from such a young age and to watch their game become so much more powerful. I remember very clearly watching the 2001 US Open Finals when Venus and Serena played each other and just sitting there mesmerized. I couldn't believe what I was watching and thinking about all of the emotional baggage they were probably carrying, playing each other, how difficult that had to be. Think about Serena playing her big sister on one of the biggest courts ever, and to watch their composure and how intense they were. It was just really something to witness.

James Brown: Dan, what were your experiences like?

Dan Wolken: Yeah, I remember in the late nineties when I was a teenager, hearing about them, reading about them. My memory is that it was mostly about Venus, at least in that late nineties era when she first got on the tour. It was a big deal when she started to play tournaments and started to play Grand Slams. Back then it was not totally unusual for teenage girls to compete and win Grand Slam titles. That was kind of the era where you had Martina Hingis, was the number one player for a stretch. Jennifer Caprioti had been on the tour and had been one of the best players at 15 and 16 years old, which obviously came with its own set of problems for her later in life.

But, I remember mostly being about Venus and then, "Oh yeah, here's Serena as well," and she ends up being the first of the two to win a major title at the 1999 US Open beating Martina Hingis. So I would say that's probably my first memory. Then obviously the beads and the hair, which was a look that you'd never saw on the tennis court at the time. That really made them stand out from a style standpoint, the youthful exuberance of them both, just the reactions of winning matches and just how sort of joyful they were on the court. I remember that very vividly from their teenage years and my teenage years.

James Brown: What do you think will be the most lasting memory, the thing that will capture the public imagination about Serena and the Williams sisters? Because as Dan, I think you astutely said, "They are entangled forever, not just in their relatives, but in that they both battled for supremacy." What do you think will be the lasting memory of the Williams sisters?

Dan Wolken: Well, I don't know that you can necessarily say just one thing. I mean, to me, the thing about tennis is that the best players define eras and you have these very distinct eras in both men's and women's tennis. This era from, I would say 2002, right before the pandemic, that's a nearly 20 year era that I think you associate with Serena Williams on the women's side. Now, obviously there's a whole other thing on the men's side with Nadal, Federer, Djokovic. But Serena Williams was very clearly the best player of the era. So, that, I think, defines the history of the sport in a way that puts her in the most rarefied era with just a very, very few players. Because it's one thing to be good, and it's one thing to be great and to win Grand Slam titles, but there's sort of a quality about which player defines the era. That's kind of hard to put your finger on, but very clearly it is Serena Williams of the last 20 years.

James Brown: Suzette, anything to add on that one?

Suzette Hackney: Sure. I think we can look at it from a monetary perspective. So, she has earned almost 100 million over her career in purses. We can look at it again from the athletic perspective. Yes, she is the GOAT. Yes, she is the top performing female tennis star in our generation that we've seen.

But I guess I would just go a little deeper than the on the court achievements. I think of Serena and I think of resiliency. I think of strength, I think of domination, and that's on the court and off. One of the things that I like about her, love about her is that she's very open about her struggles. She's very open about how hard she is on herself, how sometimes it's difficult to get out there and hit balls. Some days she didn't feel like it. All of the things that we've seen over the years, she wears her emotions on her sleeve, and that makes her relatable to us. That makes her human because in many ways, she seems superhuman when we see her hit those certain balls and such and her serve. She wore a cape for a reason the other night, right? She is a superhuman, but she's also just a normal woman. That ability to relate to all of us in that capacity, that's her legacy.

James Brown: Being able to connect with the fans, the audience, with all of us. I mean, that's certainly a remarkable thing. Not every athlete has that capability. Some capture the imagination more than others. But Suzette, you did mention something, and I want to bring Dan in on this because he wrote about this a couple days ago about considering Serena the GOAT. Your article, and I encourage those who haven't read it to seek it out, basically told folks to slow their roll on that one. How do you feel about Serena's place in the pantheon of tennis?

Dan Wolken: Yeah, I think it's very hard to talk about Greatest of all Time. GOAT. It's difficult in any sport. I think it's super difficult in tennis because you have these different eras. It's hard to compare one era to another. As I pointed out, and you've heard Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova talk about it as well, back when they played in the seventies, nobody really mentioned or focused on the number of Grand Slams. That wasn't a thing. Players didn't go out and play to try and win the most Grand slams ever. There were a lot of reasons for that. One is because they were trying to build a tour that did not have maybe universal respect. It wasn't as financially lucrative as it is now. So, that was their priority, was building a tour for women to make a lot of money playing professional sports.

They did that. They laid the groundwork for that. Players didn't go to Australia for the Australian Open very often. Chris Evert, just as an example, I think she won eight French Opens. She skipped it three times in the middle of her career to play World Team Tennis because she could make more money there. I say all that to just give some context to, Martina Navratilova's got 18 Grand Slams, Steffi Graf has 22, and she did that in the span of a decade, and she retired at age 30. I think it's just hard to compare one era to another. I think Serena Williams has the most Grand Slam titles in the Open era. She was, as I mentioned before, the dominant player of the last 15 to 20 years. But she also had more periods in her career where she didn't play well. She had some ups and downs, maybe more than some of those other players who you would put into the pantheon of women's tennis.

She doesn't have as good a winning percentage overall. She doesn't have as good of a percentage of tournaments won as Steffi Graf, who won literally 50% of the tournaments she entered in her career. So I just look at it as you probably have three players, Williams, Graf and Navratilova, who you could all argue, depending on how you want to look at it. I just find it extremely difficult to say one is the GOAT. They all have different things in their favor. It's not an open and shut case, in my view. But certainly what Serena accomplished in her era stands alone in her era. Same thing with Graf, same thing with Navratilova, however you want to rank them. It really doesn't matter much to me.

James Brown: To Suzette's point about muddy and just how much of it is right place, right time, and how much of it is her star power?

Dan Wolken: Well, I mean, it's both. Everything builds on itself as you go through history. It's the same thing with the NBA, for instance. NBA stars who played in the sixties and seventies, who built that league, who established that league, they didn't reap the same financial rewards as the guys who came after them. That's just part of what happens for a variety of reasons. I think tennis did not become a professional sport until 1968. Before then, it was basically like, it was a "amateur sport." People did not make money playing these tournaments. So it was for wealthy people to go travel around the world and play in these events. It became a professional sport in 1968. The men established a tour and then the women led by Billy Jean King and eight other of the most prominent women players at the time established what was called the Virginia Slims Tour.

They had to go out and get the sponsorships and get on television and build credibility because there was a lot of misogyny out in the world. There were a lot of people who did not believe women's sports were worth watching. Obviously, over time that has changed, not just in tennis but in a whole bunch of sports. So you had Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert, era, you had the Steffi Graf, Monica Seles era, and they set the table for somebody like Serena Williams to be one of the highest earning athletes in the world. She has done the same for the Naomi Osakas and Emma Raducanus and all these other great women's players who are extremely marketable internationally. So yes, they obviously, their popularity and who they are and what they accomplished had a lot to do with the financial success of not only themselves, but all of women's tennis. But, I think they would also acknowledge the William Sisters that it also had a lot to do with what came before them, and they'll have a lot to do with what comes after them.

James Brown: Suzette, you met Serena. What were your impressions?

Suzette Hackney: I did meet Serena and I met Venus. I had the distinct pleasure to be able to attend the King Richard Premier in Hollywood and attend the after party, and I met both of them. First impression, first of all, they walk in the room and everyone just hushed because they sucked all the air out of the room and then it all appeared on their faces. They looked so happy and so proud. I did go up and introduce myself. I was trying not to fan girl, but I did fan girl a little bit. Really, I just thanked them. I thanked them for what they have given me, what they have given other little brown and black girls and women. I thank them for their amazing play, just complete inspiration. They were very gracious. They're humble. They come from humble beginnings. Of course, they're mega stars now. They're mega athletes now, but they're humble girls from Compton. You could tell, I felt that from them, their genuine interest in meeting me, their genuine interest in asking questions, "Where do I work? What do I do? Do I cover sports?" No, I don't. So I have to say it was a really thrilling experience and one that I will hold dearly to me.

James Brown: Suzette, what did they give you?

Suzette Hackney: Oh, geez. They gave me confidence. They gave me inspiration on the court. They show how they're willing to fight and put it all out there every day. Obviously, I don't do anything similar to what they do. I'm a journalist. They're athletes, but there are days that I wake up and I'm like, "Eh, I don't really feel like doing this," or, "This isn't my best work." So, let me go back and make it my best. Let me put my best foot forward. They did that on the court. They do that on the court, but also just in life in general. One of the things that really struck me when Serena announced that she was evolving away from tennis is that she talked in the Vogue piece about, either she's going to have two feet firmly placed in tennis or two feet firmly placed in motherhood and growing her family.

She recognizes she can't do both, and that speaks to who she is because she wants to be the best at everything. Serena in particular, but both Williams sisters, have given women power. Serena, right now is exuding her power, meaning she has decided, "I'm going to walk away from a game that I love, that I still play well, that I could still achieve more titles if I wanted to, but I want to be a mom." So she's teaching people, I can be the GOAT or whatever the definition is of who you think Serena is as a player, but I can also be a mother. I can have it all. Those are wonderful gifts to offer women in particular.

James Brown: I was just remarking to a colleague yesterday that writing your own exit story and saying that you're evolving away from the sport that made you a star is like the most now thing ever. What do you make of those choices? Anyone who would like to take it?

Dan Wolken: Yeah. I think it's something that suggests how difficult this is for Serena Williams because I think if there were no other factors, she would probably still want to play. I think she can play. Obviously in any given match, she can win. She still got that ability. Now, obviously as you get older and she's now on the other side of 40, it becomes a lot more difficult to, not win one match, but to go into a Grand Slam tournament and try to win seven matches. That's the reality. Especially, when you're playing women who are half your age and they can just train harder and more consistently than you can. It impacts your performance. That's one of the things that's always been difficult about tennis because it is an individual sport.

It's not like the NBA where a player, as they get older, they can maybe have a different role. They can come off the bench or they can be a three point shooting specialist. They don't have to do as much as they did when they were younger to justify what they're putting into trying to stay fit enough to play. Tennis is a lot harder. When you are older, and I think this is obviously an issue, especially with women who want to have families and want to have kids. She already has one child and wants to have another. You can't really be halfway in and still compete. If you aren't competing or if you're not competing the way you want to and you're Serena Williams with 23 Grand Slams and you actually want to win these tournaments and you're not happy being ranked a hundred in the world and losing in the first or second round, well then you really do have to start making some tough choices.

That's the difficult part about tennis and why, honestly, for many years you saw players get out by around 30 years old because they just, "All right, I don't want to train this hard anymore. It's diminishing returns. I don't want to just be out here just to be out here, so I'm going to quit." I think Serena's part of this generation of athletes that is actually extended the career window much further than it used to be possible. But there does come a point where you do have to make those decisions. The evolving away from tennis I think, is natural. But, I think the way she phrased it reflects that it's very hard for her to do.

James Brown: Suzette, If you would like to add to that, I'd like to give you the floor.

Suzette Hackney: Of course. So, as I said earlier, one of the things that I gleaned from Serena was how important it was and is for her to succeed. We have all seen that, right? We've seen it on the court, we've seen it in her business ventures. We've seen it in her love of fashion. Everything she does, she wants to take to the next level. So, I think because she is on the other side of 40 and she understands that she wants to have another child, and that's something that's doable right now. That is her goal. So, every turn, there's a goal for her.

I think about, back in the day, she doesn't do this as much anymore. But do you remember when she would have the notebook with her notes? If she was down a set, she's going and looking and reading and scolding herself, even. Talking to herself, pushing herself. So, I think that that's just how she's built and that's what's so dynamic about her is that she understands, "I want to do this to the best of my ability." For her, after this US Open, that's likely going to be a mother for the second time. Who can't applaud that.

James Brown: Dan? Suzette, any last words you want to leave us with?

Suzette Hackney: Well, I'll leave you with this. When you talk about legacy, there are so many layers to that word when you think about Serena. But for me, another lasting legacy outside of tennis, outside of fashion, outside of venture capitalism, outside of endorsements, outside of purse money, outside of all the things we've talked about is what she has. I talked about how she's helped women and how she's helped young girls imagine their worlds be bigger. One of the things that struck me is that after she gave birth to Olympia, her first child, she had major complications. She had pulmonary embolisms. She had been talking to her doctor saying, "Something's not right, Something's not right." She was continuously dismissed. She had to keep pushing and pushing, and she wrote a piece in Elle Magazine about it after she gave birth. She had had blood clots from earlier in her career.

She knew what it felt like. So she knew there was that frustration there. She could have died. She almost died after childbirth. So, I think when she wrote the piece for Elle, she talked a lot about the fact that black people are nearly three times more likely to die during childbirth or after childbirth than white folks. That opened a lot of eyes. These are statistics we know, but for the first time we were hearing and seeing, again, someone be so open and share a very personal and difficult time in their life. She was doing that to help others. That is also her legacy.

James Brown: Dan.

Dan Wolken: Yeah, I think this is the first in what's going to be a series of departures for tennis over the next few years. That's kind of what I'm thinking about right now because you've had sort of concurrent to the Serena phenomenon, this era that started in 2003, which is a long time ago with Federer, and then Nadal coming a couple years later, and then Djokovic. Now, all those guys are, Federer is, I think 41, and Nadal's 37. Djokovic is getting into his late thirties as well. They're not going to be around very long, very much longer. They're going to still play a little bit more, but they're coming to the end too. A lot of people within tennis have been talking about, thinking about what is it going to mean when Serena's gone and when Federer's gone and Nadal's gone. What's it going to mean? Who's going to be there? Are fans going to still be as passionate?

It was interesting. Last year for me, I was at the Open. I covered it. You actually didn't have the Williams sisters. You didn't have Federer, you didn't have Nadal. It was one of the great US Opens ever. So, I think as sad for a lot of people as it will be when these people are gone from the sport, and I'll miss watching them. Like I said earlier, everything builds on itself and there's going to be new people who come around.

Right now I'm watching Coco Gauff play in the second round, and she's getting better every year and she's getting close to winning Grand Slams. To me, that's part of the awesome thing about the sport is the torch passing. I don't feel sad about it. I feel good about it because that's what's supposed to happen. Whenever Serena loses in this tournament and it's the last match, I think we can say that she gave everything she could give. That's what we want from these mega stars. The opportunity to say goodbye and to watch her play it out to the very end is that's part of the experience too. As somebody who plans on following this sport for another 20, 30 years, as long as I'm alive, you just have to get used to it. You have to appreciate what they did in their era.

James Brown: So the pipeline is full.

Dan Wolken: Well, I don't know that there's another Serena Williams out there right now. But, there's a lot of great players who were inspired by her, who modeled their game after her, who looked up to her, and who now are getting the opportunity to play her. That's cool to me. That's really what it's all about. So, when these people move on, they'll leave behind a legacy and they'll leave behind a void. But, that's the great thing about sports. There's always somebody coming to try to fill it, and you have to embrace all of it.

James Brown: If you like the show, write us a review on Apple Podcast or wherever you're listening, and do me a favor. Share it with a friend. What do you think of the show and what will you remember about Serena's career? Let me know at jaBrown@usatoday.com or at podcast@usatoday.com. Thanks to Suzette and Dan for joining me and to Alexis Gustin for our production assistance. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning. From all of us at USA Today, thanks for listening. I'm James Brown, and as always, be well.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Serena Williams' last set: 5 Things Podcast