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Related: About this forumSerena Williams's Love Match
This is is a love story.
It wasnt seamless, starry eyes at first light. There was a discovery, unexpected and shocking. There were moments of really getting pissed and the standard irritation that comes when one half of the whole kept leaving the suitcase in the hallway. But there were also moments of unplanned intimacy that is the only true kind of intimacy in a love story, soft touches and laughter and absurdity, because you need absurdity in a love story, since love is slightly absurd anyway, a feeling that, like eternity, is indefinable.
Which leads us, on the surface at least, to the seemingly mismatched pairing of 35-year-old Serena Williams and her fiancé, 34-year-old Alexis Ohanian. She is the beyond remarkable tennis player, although all superlatives are pointless. He is in the high cotton of high tech as the co-founder of the Web site Reddit, which has 234 million unique monthly users. They became engaged last December, after first meeting roughly a year and a half earlier, then found out in January that Serena was pregnant. They will be married in the fall after the birth of the baby.
With 23 grand-slam wins on the womens pro tennis tour spanning nearly three decadesfrom her first, at 17 years old, in September of 1999, to her latest, at 35, in January of 2017, and the most in the open eraSerena is in the heart of every conversation concerning the best athlete of her time. If I were a man, then it wouldnt be any sort of question, she told me. She may well be right, a society still conditioned to believe that men are better than women in everything except the superfluous.
Alexis, on the other hand, had never seen a tennis match until he met Serena, in May of 2015 in Rome. He knew so little about the game that the photo he excitedly posted on Instagram of her playing her first match in the Italian Open showed her foot faulting.
Serena plays a sport that requires the mental focus of instantaneously letting go of losing points and moving on because there are a lot of excruciating ones no matter how great you are, continual regrouping and re-inventing: dwell on them, you lose confidence; lose confidence and you lose. She is also superbly conditioned, given that a female tennis player may run about three miles in a match without the luxury of coming out of the game because you feel winded or lost too much money gambling with teammates the night before on the charter and would rather mope on the bench.
Alexiss athletic history amounted to the level of a very gangly defensive tackle for Howard High School in Ellicott City, Maryland, far more interested in science fairs and programming and building Web sites. His skill at tennis is not one of potential; when Serena offered to give him a lesson, he turned it down so he could tell his friends that he once turned down a lesson with Serena Williams.
-snip-
http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2017/06/serena-williams-cover-story?mbid=social_twitter
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Serena Williams's Love Match (Original Post)
Mosby
Jun 2017
OP
get the red out
(13,459 posts)1. Very good
Very good to read something lovely for a change, with all the chaos in this country now.
northoftheborder
(7,566 posts)2. Lovely story. Thanks for posting.
A big Serena and Venus fan here!
elleng
(130,156 posts)3. 'When Serena offered to give him a lesson, he turned it down so he could tell his friends
that he once turned down a lesson with Serena Williams.'
I only did a quick search before I posted the cover.
Sorry, Mosby.
Mosby
(16,168 posts)5. No worries, I was going to cross post but didn't
I'm glad you posted this in the AA group.
She is a remarkable woman and tennis player, she could easily play into her fourties if she wants to.
sheshe2
(83,356 posts)6. She is remarkable, Mosby.
And that cover is stunning.