Serena Williams, seen celebrating a win at the 2022 US Open, announced on Monday that she'll return to tennis at this month's Queen's Club tournament.COREY SIPKIN/AFP/Getty Images
You no longer need be great at sports in order to be a professional. The thing that must be in elite trim is your branding.
Back when she mattered, Serena Williams was better at both aspects than any of her peers. Can you think of another pro who was both as good and as definably a type? Williams pioneered the push-pull personality that the most talked-about contemporary athletes have mimicked since. You were never sure whether she was being flirty or menacing. The two things looked and sounded the same.
One supposes Williams thought she could transition that into retirement. Instead of the most fascinating tennis player in the world, she would be the most interesting sports-adjacent entrepreneur/philanthropist.
She made one miscalculation – there is no ESPN for philanthropy. Once you drop the racquet, you’re just another hack pushing numbers around a spreadsheet, and everyone forgets about you.
It’s the reason people recoil when they see Jeff Bezos in those stitched-directly-onto-his-body rayon shirts he likes to wear while on perma-vacation. You don’t get to be stupidly rich doing something no one cares about and cool. It’s one or the other.
So Williams has come crawling back to tennis. This isn’t tennis tennis. It’s tennis in quotes. Williams, 44, will make a soft re-entry into the game as a WTA wild card entrant in doubles in a week’s time.
She’s partnering with 19-year-old Canadian Victoria Mboko. Williams can do the delegating, and the kid can do the running.
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Nobody cares if Williams wins or loses, because nobody gives a damn about doubles. The only goal here is recapturing a beachhead into celebrity.
This is the next phase of sports – athletes who are known for being famous, rather than for being athletic.
Boxing is already filled to the gills with these people. The beauty there is that you needn’t be good. You need only be better than the person currently trying to crack your skull. Why risk your life against dangerous 20-somethings when you can make real money staggering around the ring with steroidal YouTubers?
It won’t work in every sport. It’s hard to picture an influencer quarterback without also imagining a hearse on the field. But in most sports, lowering the bar a little creates enough room for the gym-fit hobbyist to carry over.
Currently, the stars at the French Open are staging a wan protest by limiting post-match press conferences to 15 minutes (the percentage they claim to earn of Grand Slam revenues).
My question – does a single one of them have something so interesting to say that it would take 15 minutes to say it? Maybe if they convince Fran Lebowitz to join the tour, this will start to feel like a punishment.
Canadian rising star Victoria Mboko, who lost in the third round of the French Open over the weekend, is Serena Williams's new doubles partner.DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP/Getty Images
It gets you to thinking. What if the interviews were interesting? What if tennis wasn’t so filled up with celebrity zeroes who can’t make enough money? What if you could replace them with people who bring money with them, rather than complain about getting enough of it out? This is just me and you talking here, but is there any chance we can get Zendaya into Wimbledon?
She did make a movie about tennis. That must mean she’s capable of waving a racquet in anger. She’s not going to win anything, but neither is the qualifier from Uzbekistan that nobody’s ever heard of.
If Serena Williams, well into middle age, hasn’t played elite anything in four years, is good enough to get a pass, why not a 20-something Hollywood star who plays on weekends?
Eventually, someone is going to have this idea, which will be embarrassing to witness, and also work. Like, really work.
If you can buy your way into a Formula 1 car, where there is a serious risk of death, how long until someone with enough TikTok followers cons their way onto a Major League Baseball roster, where the worst thing that will happen is that you’ll get tobacco juice on your stretchy pants?
Another moment in the French Open – Naomi Osaka’s first-round match against Germany’s Laura Siegemund. Osaka showed up in a gold-flake ballgown, complete with train, that required on-court disassembly.
Naomi Osaka drew attention with her outfit at the French Open. She also drew the ire of her first-round opponent, Germany's Laura Siegemund.JULIEN DE ROSA/AFP/Getty Images
Afterward, Siegemund grumbled, “I came here to play tennis, not put on a fashion show.”
No. No, no, no. That is a profound misunderstanding of what you do for a living. If Siegemund wants to “play” tennis, I’m sure there are many wonderful public courts near her house.
She is at the French Open to sell things – tickets, TV packages, bottled water and, yes, clothes. Don’t be angry with Osaka because she’s better at it than you are.
Osaka is another one who’s probably never going to win anything important again. But as she does a slow roll down the second half of her career, she has come to terms with her purpose. She may play sports, but she’s in the shmatta business.
You want to make many millions of dollars? This is the trade-off. I’ve yet to hear of the top athlete who remains a sponsorless purist. So despite the occasional whining a la Siegemund, I assume they’ve accepted their new job descriptions.
Personal branding – this is the real competition now. Who’s got the attention, and who knows how to monetize it?
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The goal isn’t this or that number of championships. It’s Tiger Woods and Tom Brady. It’s a brand that lives beyond your playing days. It’s fame detached from performance.
Williams thought she’d made it there, but she hadn’t. So now she’s returning to the main source to soak herself in its healing marketing waters. Everybody is cheering her on like she’s owed this, which will smooth the path for the next mediocre aspirant. Eventually, dignity won’t figure into it any more.
This move away from meritocracy into something more like athletic autocracy is neither good nor bad. It’s inevitable. Once the economy of sport became untethered from business reality, the best-on-best ideal was bound to become an anachronism. Legalized gambling was its death knell.
Professional leagues and tournaments were created to stage games. That’s not what they do any more. Now they exist to grow revenue, however and wherever they can. Whomever is most likely to do that for them will be the one who gets to star in the show.