It was little wonder that the match was high on drama. Williams is a card-carrying member of the Screen Actors Guild, and Jankovic, who has battled a host of injuries from head to toe this year, has said she probably would have gone to school and studied theater if she hadn’t become a professional tennis player.

“I got the trophy here,” Jankovic said, “and I thought, you know, I should have gotten an Oscar for all this drama throughout the week. Despite, you know, getting a trophy, I should have gotten, you know, a trophy for the acting, for my drama. I think I’ve done a great job.”

No woman has gone so long between stints at the top as Williams, who came into the tournament ranked No. 3 and will overtake Ana Ivanovic, who lost in the second round. “I can’t believe I’m No. 1,” she said. “It’s been so long.”

Williams did not drop a set in the tournament and lost 40 games. It was a performance reminiscent of 2002, when she did not drop a set and beat Venus in the first women’s prime-time final.

As ecstatic as she was after match point, Williams made it clear in her news conference 90 minutes later that nine was not enough. “I’m pushing the doors to double digits, which I obviously want to get to,” she said, adding, “I feel like I can do it.”

Williams’s place in the pantheon of American luminaries was secure no matter what happened Sunday. That it had been five years since she held the No. 1 ranking did not preclude the two men behind the recent HBO documentary “The Black List” from including her in their portraits of 22 of the most fascinating and influential black Americans.

The 26-year-old Williams joined, among others, the Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison and the former Secretary of State Colin Powell in pulling back the curtain to reveal the challenges and rewards of black life in the United States.