Watching Serena Williams in the 2019 U.S. Open felt different. She looked different, moving across the court with an ease and elegance we hadn’t quite seen since before she had a baby in 2017.

She played with a quintessential-Serena level of confidence, plus the power that’s become so synonymous with her name. She was calm and relaxed, shrugging off errors and maintaining her style of play while adding a few surprise trips to the net every once in a while. Her fire was always there, but it morphed into the “channeled aggression,” as ESPN’s commentators repeatedly described it, fueling her greatness.

List of Women's singles Grand Slam tournaments tennis champions. Note that some major changes have taken place over the years that have affected how many titles have been won by various players.

Through her first six matches in New York, it really seemed like her record-tying 24th Grand Slam title would happen this time. Until it became abundantly clear in the middle of the seventh that it wouldn’t. She lost Saturday to first-time Grand Slam champ Bianca Andreescu, who, at 19, was not born when Serena won her first major.

But the biggest takeaway here about the greatest tennis player of all time is that, although she has not one thing to prove, she will win another Grand Slam, eventually.

Especially before the U.S. Open, it was fair to question Serena winning another Grand Slam and tying Margaret Court’s all-time record of 24 majors. ESPN commentator and 21-time Grand Slam doubles champ Pam Shriver told the Los Angeles Times, “I’m getting really uncomfortable with whether or not she can do it.” And, as The Guardian wrote Wednesday, it’s OK if she doesn’t break the record. Of course it is. This isn’t about breaking or tying a record, as if that would somehow alter her already cemented legacy as the GOAT.

It’s about simply winning again, and a close examination of her recent path shows clear progress. She’s almost there. Yes, she’s going to be 38 later this month, but, despite some minor injuries, her comeback is trending upward and against the aging curve.

Serena plowed through her U.S. Open opponents, illustrating that she very nearly has all the pieces put perfectly back together to win a major. She just doesn’t quite have them lined up yet. In her path to her fourth Grand Slam final since having a baby, she played her best tennis of the last three years, and that was obvious to anyone paying attention. Her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, said as much multiple times. But she has repeatedly stumbled when there’s just one match standing between her and tying the all-time record.

“I believe I could have played better,” Serena said Saturday after the final. “I believe I could have done more. I believe I could have just been more Serena today.

“I honestly don’t think Serena showed up. I have to kind of figure out how to get her to show up in Grand Slam finals.”

Against Andreescu, she played passively, fell behind early and was on her way to being on the wrong end of a fast match. The 19-year-old Canadian broke her to open the first set and did it again to go up 2-0 in the second. Serena stunningly came back from being down 5-1 to make it 5-all, and it seemed like she shook off her nerves (or whatever it was). But she simply started playing well too late.

“All of it honestly, truly is super frustrating,” she said. “I’m, like, so close, so close, so close, yet so far away. … I just got to just keep fighting through it.”

The intensity she had in nearly pulling off an incredible comeback is what fans saw from her throughout the tournament, and it’s what makes it clear she’s so close to playing a complete Grand Slam tournament once again.

Serena gave birth to her daughter, Alexis Olympia, on September 1, 2017 and nearly died from subsequent complications. Her path back to the top has been riddled with challenges, ranging from postpartum depression and struggles to get back in shape to a mid-match ankle injury contributing to her Australian Open loss in January and the back spasms that forced her to retire against Andreescu in August at the Rogers Cup in Toronto.

Wimbledon in July was her third Grand Slam final as a mother. She lost to Simona Halep and felt like a “deer in the headlights” on a court where she’s won seven times before. Last year, she lost in the controversial U.S. Open final to Naomi Osaka, and before that, it was Wimbledon again, this time against Angelique Kerber.

In each of those finals, Serena was outplayed, which was also true for her match against Andreescu. The difference this time around was between her first-round and semifinal matches, she had fewer close calls, playing stronger and faster, hitting the tough shots fans have come to expect from her.

She opened the final Grand Slam tournament of 2019 with a dominating takedown of her non-rival Maria Sharapova. It was the most highly anticipated first-round match, and Serena rocked 32-year-old Sharapova, winning in just 59 minutes and extending their head-to-head record to 20-2.

She then moved on to rising American star 17-year-old Caty McNally in her only three-set match of the tournament. Another opponent who was not born when Serena won her first Grand Slam. She cruised past Czech Republic’s Karolina Muchova and then-No. 22 player in the world, Petra Martic, in the third and fourth rounds, respectively.

Even after rolling her ankle while volleying against Martic in the second set, Serena added some tape and a brace and carried on — unlike her ankle injury at the Australian Open in January that contributed to her falling apart in a quarterfinals loss. Martic, a 28-year-old player from Croatia, thought Serena was playing even better after the medical timeout for her ankle.

“She started going for even more, I think. She felt like maybe she couldn’t move that well anymore,” Martic said, via ESPN. “Her shots were really precise. Serve was unbelievable. And when she hits those backhands and those first serves that well, it’s not easy to play against her.”

Then in the quarterfinals, there was Wang Qiang, a 27-year-old player from China ranked No. 18 in the world at that point. Wang was having a fantastic tournament and upset then-No. 2 Ashleigh Barty in the fourth round. And Serena absolutely destroyed her, 6-1, 6-0, in just 44 minutes for her 100th winning match at the U.S. Open. It was brutal, as Serena truly started looking more like the the player she was three years ago.

Her semifinal match seemed like it might be different. It was against Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina, who’s No. 5 in the world and Williams’ only opponent of the tournament with a higher ranking.

No matter, because Serena’s power seemed to throw Svitolina off her game. She grew stronger as Svitolina seemingly retreated and looked more and more off her game with each point lost. Williams moved smoothly from corner to corner, and her serve was as powerful and precise as ever in the 6-3, 6-1 win.

And then she had Andreescu, who, despite being a teenager, has been an unstoppable force on a meteoric rise this year after finishing the 2018 season ranked 178th. She’s now ranked No. 5.

In the U.S. Open final, Serena looked like a shell of the player fans saw perform in the two weeks prior. She played stiff, and her typically dominant serve was off. That confidence she so clearly had in the earlier in the tournament disappeared, as Andreescu took charge and mirrored Williams’ style of play but did it monumentally better. The teenager now 8-0 against top-10 players.

Reflecting after the match, Serena said she played than in her Wimbledon final loss in July, but understandably, it’s frustratingly not enough.

“I could have played better. That’s the only solace that I can take right now.”

We know that. She proved that in the matches leading up to Saturday’s final when she looked just as good off aces as with marathon points. Until the final, she moved better, faster and harder than in recent months as she dealt with injuries, as well as in the last couple years.

She’s just so close to putting it all together for another Grand Slam win, and maybe the few months between now and January’s Australian Open are exactly what she needs to regroup. Her resilience and passion are constants. They’re part of what makes her an icon, the GOAT and a 23-time Grand Slam champion.

No. 24 is coming.

FLUSHING MEADOWS, N.Y. -- Twenty-four thousand tennis fans and one Duchess of Sussex gathered in Arthur Ashe Stadium on a cool September Saturday in New York City, hoping to witness a coronation of Serena Williams, a player cut from unmistakable tennis royalty.

What they took in, instead, was quite possibly the most crushing defeat of Williams’ iconic career, a 6-3, 7-5 result in a women’s final that showcased the utter fearlessness and resolve of a Canadian teenager, Bianca Andreescu, and a Serena Williams who at times was scarcely recognizable.

And so Williams’ US Open title total remains at six, and her major victory total remains stuck at 23, one short of Margaret Court’s record 24. Williams desperately wanted to achieve this record at the US Open, where she is loved as nowhere else, with Her Royal Highness, Meghan Markle, in her box, along with her usual people. That she didn’t doesn’t mean she is not the greatest player in the history of the sport, because she is.

It just means this is really hard to do, especially when you are a 37-year-old mother and the oldest finalist in the Open era. It’s fair to ask how many more final chances there will be.

“I think this was the worst match I've played all tournament,” Williams said. “It’s inexcusable to play at that level.”

OPINION: Why can't Serena win No. 24?

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OPINION: Serena 2.0? Andreescu mirrors the 23-time champion

Williams fought back heroically from 1-5 down, championship point staring at her like an onrushing subway train, to square the match at five, before it all went wrong in the final two games. Her great misfortune was to be across the net from a kid like the 19-year-old Andreescu, who was ranked No. 178 in the world this time last year and played her first Grand Slam final as if she’d been doing it for years.

This was Williams’ fourth straight final loss since she gave birth to her daughter two years ago, and by far the most painful. At Wimbledon this year, Simona Halep threw the tennis equivalent of a perfect game to beat her. At last year’s Open, Naomi Osaka, three code violations and a spat with chair umpire Carlos Ramos combined to make for a perfectly wretched experience, but as Williams’ coach, Patrick Mouratogloou, said, Williams was neither fully fit or ready to compete for a title so soon after giving birth.

This year, though, was different. It seemed to be all lined up for Williams. She demolished Maria Sharapova in the first round. After a slight wobble against 17-year-old American Caty McNally (remember that name) in the second round, she steamrolled everybody. In the previous two rounds – quarters and semis – she lost a total of five games. That is insane dominance.

But with all of the crowd support and six rounds of superb work, the Duchess and most everyone else thought beating Andreescu would be a formality, until two problems ensued.

First, there was Andreescu’s competitive makeup. Most players – even top players – lose to Williams before they even strike a ball, because they are so intimidated by her legend, her power, her aura. Andreescu’s attitude was essentially: Serena’s amazing. Now let’s get it on.

“She set the tone from the very beginning that she was not going to be pushed around,” Sylvain Bruneau, Andreescu’s coach, told USA TODAY Sports. “She’s not scared. She goes for it.”

The second problem was that Williams had as bad a day of serving as she has ever had. Through the first six rounds, she had won 51 of 54 service games. Saturday, she lost more services games (six) than she won (five), and didn’t even get half of her first serves (34 of 77, 44 percent) in play. She was broken three times on double faults, and had eight doubles in all.

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Andreescu returned splendidly and bravely, for sure, but Williams also sabotaged herself, and you could see the weight of that in her body language, hanging on her like a 500-pound sack.

Understand that her serve is not just the greatest weapon in the sport; it’s psychological fuel for her, the mojo that she can always count on to win points and matches even if other parts of her game are a bit off.

The serve was way off, and so was everything else. Williams had almost double the errors that Andreescu had (33 to 17). In the fifth game of the second set, she actually had a checked swing of sorts, starting to swing, stopping, then swinging again, launching the ball wide.

Williams turns 38 later this month. She has been runner-up in four major finals in the last two years, so there can be no doubt she remains a premier player. But this racket – pardon the pun – is not going to get any easier. You have to win seven matches to capture a major. Twenty years after winning her first major title right here in Ashe, Williams has proven very adept at winning the first six of those matches, but not so adept thereafter.

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She talked about the deep disappointment and frustration about being “so close, so close, so close, yet so far away,” and about how the real Serena Williams didn’t show up today.

“I have to kind of figure out how to get her to show up in Grand Slam finals,” Williams said.

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