What about the new Wimbledon champion Serena Williams?… Well, in a word, she’s better. Ace a tennis player – senior. As a business woman – older. Like a world star – major. This iconic 30-year-old has led such a dramatic life that as a 163 seed, standing on the court, trying to figure out how to return her serve, it’s hard to know where to start. What has made her older?

Born Serena Jameka Williams in Saginaw, Michigan on September 26, 1981, Serena spent her early years in Compton, where she first picked up a racket at age five. Four years later, she and her family moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, and her father Richard soon took over all of her training. What he and his daughter built was important: the most powerful serve in women’s tennis, a rocket return, a ferocious forehand, a brutal backhand, a delicious drop shot (see game 7, set 3 of the final this year’s Wimbledon). In short, the complete package.

In her first professional match at age 13, she lost to the world number 149 in Quebec City, earning just $240. In her last professional match, 17 years later, she defeated the new world number 2 at Wimbledon and has won more prize money than any female athlete in history.

In truth, his entire career is a procession of startling statistics like this:

29 Grand Slam titles (14 in singles, 13 in women’s doubles and 2 in mixed doubles).

5 Australian Opens

1 French Open

5 Wimbledon titles

3 US Opens

2 Olympic golds.

She has been important off the court as well. A Sports Illustrated model, fashion icon, designer, businesswoman, philanthropist and much more. But in truth, what makes this woman truly important is not how she has dealt with the good. But how she has dealt with the bad.

The bad, like everything in Serena’s life, has been greater. The racism she had to deal with growing up in a predominantly white sport. The brutal murder of her sister Yetunde Price, shot to death by a Crips gang member, sent Serena into depression and therapy. The stalker arrested at her Palm Beach home last year. But above all, the health problems that threaten her life in recent years.

At the top of her game in the summer of 2010, riding high after winning a fourth Wimbledon, Serena had the world at her feet. Unfortunately, in a Munich restaurant, she also had a piece of glass at her feet. One fateful step triggered a horrific chain of events: Glass sliced ​​through her foot. The foot required two operations. The operations caused a near-fatal blood clot in one of her lungs. The blood clot in her lungs required emergency surgery, costing part of her lung and the better part of two years of her career.

For a star athlete at the height of her powers, not being able to walk, let alone hit a forehand winner, was the cruelest of fates. Serena was in the background. But, whether it’s a tennis player, a creative challenge, or a serious health issue, put anything in Serena’s way and she saves it.

With characteristic drive and determination, Serena devoted herself to months of grueling, lonely physical therapy and dedicated training. She made her first appearance on the WTA tour in almost a year in Eastbourne, England, where she won her first match since Wimbledon 2010. Slowly but surely, her fitness, desire and drive were built through matches at Wimbledon, Stanford, Cincinnati and the US Open, coming to a fairytale finale at yesterday’s Wimbledon, where she regained her women’s singles and doubles titles.

Last year I couldn’t walk. This year he leaps across Center Court at Wimbledon hoisting a trophy over his head. That’s what makes Serena Williams important.