By Chris Oddo | Thursday April 7, 2016

18-time major champion Martina Navratilova had a nice chat with WTA Insider Courtney Nguyen for this week’s Insider Podcast, and the pair had a deep discussion, breaking down Serena Williams’ performance this year and her chances going forward. Williams, who had her quest for the Calendar Slam tragically snuffed out by Roberta Vinci at last year’s U.S. Open, has not claimed a title since winning the Western and Southern Open in Cincinnati last August.

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Granted, Williams has only played four events in that span. After the U.S. Open Williams took the rest of the season off, but this year she has struggled to close out titles, losing in finals at Australia and Indian Wells to Angelique Kerber and Victoria Azarenka respectively, before dropping a round of 16 tilt to eventual runner-up Svetlana Kuznetsova in Miami.

Is the 21-time major champion finally losing her superpowers? Is she battling to find her fitness, perhaps carrying a lingering injury?

Whatever the case, whenever Williams goes four tournaments without a title, it’s cause for discussion.

“For me the surprise would be that she hasn’t won a tournament yet, at the same time she’s only played three, so not that big of deal, but it’s been a long time since Serena Williams actually has won a tournament,” Navratilova told Nguyen. “I think some of the fire has been lacking, or it just comes up too little too late like against Victoria [Azarenka] at Indian Wells. She had break points to get to 5-all (in set two of their final). You feel like if she had won that game she would have won the match, but then again maybe not.”

Navratilova says that Williams will be fine, she’s simply too talented not to be.

“You don’t panic, not when it comes to a great player like Serena Williams. There is no need to panic, I think she just needs to find some joy. It just seems to me that she’s not happy on the court. Even when things weren’t going her way and when she was fighting it still felt like she embraced that fight, and right now I don’t see her embracing that fight,” Navratilova said. “Sometimes that’s enough to not be able to finish that comeback. If she finds that emotion. I won’t say joy—but you know, passion—for being in those fights, I think she’ll right the ship. There’s nothing wrong with her game.”



No matter the reason of Serena’s title slump, there is one fact that nobody can deny: She’ll turn 35 this September. Her quest to tie and surpass Steffi Graf and Margaret Court on the all-time Grand Slam title list will be as much a fight to stay fit at an age when most tennis players—legendary or otherwise—have long since hung up the tennis trainers as it is a Vision Quest of an elite athlete with a singular goal in mind.

“When you get older you get more nervous,” Navratilova said. “We all do. Things that work normally don’t work as well. The bad days are worse and perhaps more frequent. The misses are worse. You set up a point exactly the way you want to and you have that winning shot on your racquet and ten years ago you close your eyes and you make it. Now you’re concentrating and you still miss it. And just by a little bit.”

With clay, arguably Williams’ worst surface (if there is such a thing), the venue for the next major, Williams will have to get in shape to grind out long points with an up-and-coming field of hungry players. Last year Williams won five three-setters en route to her second career title in Paris—does she have another long slog on the terre battue in her?

Navratilova thinks it will be tough to do without some matches under her belt.

“Serena has always been an enigma, in that I felt I needed to play a lot more tennis than Serena, because there is so much timing involved in my game that I needed the matches to kind of feel confident and fine-tune my game,” Navratilova explained. “Serena is a much different player in that she basically blows people off the court and doesn’t need that many matches. Even when she was coming to a Grand Slam not having played for three months she still just needed a couple of matches and she was back to normal. In years past she could get away with not playing matches, but now it seems to be catching up. She just hasn’t played enough tennis.”

It will be interesting to see how Williams approaches the clay-court season. One deep run in Europe should be more than enough to get her into shape for Paris, but if she doesn’t emerge from the Roland Garros lead-up with a title, will it play with her confidence? And how about the rest of the tour? Are they benefitting from a newfound belief that Williams is less invincible this year than she has ever been before?

There are, most certainly, some uncertainties. But one thing that is forever certain: Serena Williams loves proving doubters wrong. The more there are the more joy she seems to take from it. As the doubters emerge, could Williams be finding that motivational “passion” Navratilova speaks of at this very moment?