Serena Williams Wins U.S. Open and Returns to No. 1

Serena Williams flung her racket straight up and jumped for joy, hopping and skipping and screaming and generally looking like someone who had just won her first Grand Slam title.
Displaying the talent and tenacity that helped her dominate tennis earlier in the decade, Williams outlasted Jelena Jankovic 6-4, 7-5 Sunday night in a thrill-a-minute match chock full of marvelous strokes and momentum swings to win her third U.S. Open championship and ninth Grand Slam title.
And there was this "added bonus," as Williams termed it: She returns to No. 1 in the rankings.
As the women met at the net afterward, Williams felt compelled to say to Jankovic, "I'm sorry I got so excited."
No apology necessary.
Four times a single point from heading to a third set, Williams was simply relentless. She took the final four games and took the title without dropping a set. The closest she came to losing one? In the quarterfinals, when she beat older sister Venus in two tiebreakers.
On this night, Venus was in the guest box, cheering for Kid Sis.
"Serena was a better player tonight," Jankovic said. "She was just too good tonight."
It was Williams' first triumph at Flushing Meadows since 2002, and it guaranteed that the American will lead the rankings Monday for the first time since August 2003 - the longest gap between stints at No. 1 for a woman.
Jankovic was in that spot for one week last month and would have returned there by winning a title match that was postponed from Saturday night because of Tropical Storm Hanna.
Williams’s place in the pantheon of American luminaries was secure no matter what transpired Sunday. That she last held the No. 1 ranking in August 2003 — a generation ago in sports years — did not preclude the two men behind the recent HBO documentary, “The Color List,” from including her in their portraits of 22 of the most fascinating and influential African-Americans.
The 26-year-old Williams joined, among others, the Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison and the former Secretary of State Colin Powell in pulling back the curtain to reveal the challenges and rewards of black life in the United States in the documentary, a collaboration between the photographer and filmmaker Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and Elvis Mitchell, a former film critic for The New York Times.
“I felt honored that they wanted me to speak on it and to be a part of it,” Williams said. “I was so excited to do it.”
Morrison talked about writing being her only “free place,” an unfiltered outlet for her expression. The tennis court is that place for Williams, an entertainer inexorably drawn to the spotlight. Her flair for drama makes each of her matches an improvisational play in two or three acts.
While Morrison and Williams would appear to have much in common, Williams found Powell’s interview the most illuminating. “I was really struck by his story,” she said, “and everything he was saying.”