There’s no better word to sum up Serena Williams in 2015, Tom Perrotta suggests than — wait for it — wisdom:
At age 33, Williams has improbably peaked when injuries and indifference usually spell the end for a tennis champion. She remains an otherworldly athlete, blessed with speed, flexibility and strength that equals or surpasses her competitors. It’s not a trivial advantage.
But Williams’s speed and power have long obscured other, quieter attributes. She is a tennis player’s tennis player, and these days she relies more than ever on her mind, her determination, her tactics, her anticipation and a serve that is a study in perfect mechanics.
“I’m a really amazing thinker on the court,” Williams said.
To illustrate her wisdom, the Wall Street Journal chose this image:
Please, why not test for performance-enhancing drugs?
The Man Without Qualities, by Robert Musil, translated by Sophie Wilkins:
Chapter 13 (“A Racehorse of Genius Crystallizes the Recognition of Being a Man Without Qualities”):
“The time had come when people were starting to speak of genius on the soccer field or in the boxing ring, although there would still be at most only one genius of a halfback or great tennis-court tactician for every ten or so explorers, tenors, or writers of genius who cropped up in the papers. The new spirit was not yet quite sure of itself. But just then Ulrich suddenly read somewhere, like a premonitory breath of ripening summer, the expression “the racehorse of genius.” It stood in the report of a sensational racing success, and the author was probably unaware of the full magnitude of the inspiration his pen owed to the communal spirit. But Ulrich instantly grasped the fateful connection between his entire career and this genius among racehorses. For the horse has, of course, always been sacred to the cavalry, and as a youth Ulrich had hardly ever heard talk in barracks of anything but horses and women. He had fled from this to become a great man, only to find that when as the result of his varied exertions he perhaps could have felt within reach of his goal, the horse had beaten him to it.”
http://www.runofplay.com/2008/06/25/viennese-genius/
https://musilreader.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/ulrich-overtaken-by-racehorse/