2015 U.S. Open: Serena wins in the quarterfinals

With Serena three wins from the first calendar Grand Slam in decades, her Open run was gathering more attention than ever. The stars were in attendance: Oprah Winfrey, Kendrick Lamar, Kim Kardashian. It was also the last Open match attended by Donald J. Trump, then a presidential candidate, who had been a fixture at the tournament for decades. He was booed loudly when he was shown on the stadium screens. Serena won, 6-2, 1-6, 6-3, but her tension in the spotlight was clear in her postmatch news conference, during which she was terse and exhausted. She lost her next match in stunning fashion, falling to 43rd-ranked Roberta Vinci in the semifinals.

The winner said: “She’s the toughest player I’ve ever played in my life, and the best person I know. So it’s going against your best friend and at the same time for me going against the greatest competitor in women’s tennis. So it was really difficult today.”

The Times said: “There was no tweaking the narrative arc of their remarkable careers on Tuesday. Though Venus the elder swung for the lines and even won the second set in a hurry, Serena the younger prevailed — as she has so often in recent years.”

2017 Australian Open: Serena wins in the final

Serena won, 6-4, 6-4, to claim her 23rd Grand Slam singles title, passing Steffi Graf’s Open era record. What few at Rod Laver knew was that there was a third family member on the court that day. Serena was about two months pregnant with her first daughter, Olympia Alexis Ohanian Jr.

The winner said: “There’s no way I would be at 23 without her; there’s no way I would be at 1 without her. There’s no way I would have anything without her. She’s my inspiration. She’s the only reason I’m standing here today, and the only reason that the Williams sisters exist.”

The Times said: “The beads and the braces are long gone, but the sisters’ power tennis remains. And though their father, Richard Williams, in one of the great sports predictions, saw the future clearly when he said the younger, fiercer Serena would turn out to be the better player, perhaps not even he realized how wide the gap would eventually grow.”