‘‘You don’t understand me,’’ Serena Williams said with a hint of impatience in her voice. ‘‘I’m just about winning.’’ She and I were facing each other on a sofa in her West Palm Beach home this July. She looked at me with wariness as if to say, Not you, too. I wanted to talk about the tennis records that she is presently positioned either to tie or to break and had tried more than once to steer the conversation toward them. But she was clear: ‘‘It’s not about getting 22 Grand Slams,’’ she insisted. Before winning a calendar-year Grand Slam and matching Steffi Graf’s record of 22 Slams, Serena would have to win seven matches and defend her U.S. Open title; those were the victories that she was thinking about.

She was wearing an enviable pink jumpsuit with palm trees stamped all over it as if to reflect the trees surrounding her estate. It was a badass outfit, one only someone of her height and figure could rock. She explained to me that she learned not to look ahead too much by looking ahead. As she approached 18 Grand Slam wins in 2014, she said, ‘‘I went too crazy. I felt I had to even up with Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova.’’ Instead, she didn’t make it past the fourth round at the Australian Open, the second at the French Open or the third at Wimbledon. She tried to change her tactics and focused on getting only to the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open. Make it to the second week and see what happens, she thought. ‘‘I started thinking like that, and then I got to 19. Actually I got to 21 just like that, so I’m not thinking about 22.’’ She raised her water bottle to her lips, looking at me over its edge, as if to give me time to think of a different line of questioning.

Three years ago she partnered with the French tennis coach Patrick Mouratoglou, and I’ve wondered if his coaching has been an antidote to negotiating American racism, a dynamic that informed the coaching of her father, Richard Williams. He didn’t want its presence to prevent her and Venus from winning. In his autobiography, ‘‘Black and White: The Way I See It,’’ he describes toughening the girls’ ‘‘skin’’ by bringing ‘‘busloads of kids from the local schools into Compton to surround the courts while Venus and Serena practiced. I had the kids call them every curse word in the English language, including ‘Nigger,’ ’’ he writes. ‘‘I paid them to do it and told them to ‘do their worst.’ ’’ His focus on racism meant that the sisters were engaged in two battles on and off the court. That level of vigilance, I know from my own life, can drain you. It’s easier to shut up and pretend it’s not happening, as the bitterness and stress build up.