Serena Williams recently won Sports Illustrated sportsperson of the year To many, this is a pretty controversial result given other nominees such as the 22-year-old world #1 golfer, and two-time major champion Jordan Spieth took the golf world by storm. And then there was Stephen Curry who led the Warriors to their first NBA title in 40 years.
But of course it’s hard to compare achievements across sports, let alone the difference between individual sports and team sports. It comes down to one’s opinon and how an athlete’s accomplishments are weighted based on their sport.
What makes this particular situation interesting is that a case can be made that Serena Williams may not have even had the best season in her sport. There is one other nominee we can compare Williams’ 2015 to: Novak Djokovic.
Djokovic is the ATP World #1 and like Serena won three slams this year. When you put it into perspective however, evidence and results demonstrate that Djokovic’s year bests Serena’s, and here’s why.
Keeping in mind that no player has won all four majors in one year on the men’s tour since the great Rod Laver in 1969 or the women’s tour since Steffi Graf achieved it in 1988, Djokovic and Serena both came very close to these marks.
The perception is Serena Williams came closer to achieving the calendar grand-slam but that’s only because of the order the majors are played. When you look at the majors overall Djokovic has the better results with 3 majors and a final at the French. In contrast the 21-time Grand Slam champion Serena ended up with a semi-final in the US Open, the final major of the season.
So despite Williams coming closer to the calendar grand-slam in terms of the length of her campaign, many often forget that at the end of the day Djokovic had the better results at slams, even if it’s just by a match.
People will argue it’s just one match, but lets go onto the opposition both played in majors this year. At the Australian Open Williams beat two top ten players, not a single top ten player en route to her Roland Garros title, and just a few weeks later only one at Wimbledon when she faced 2004 champion Maria Sharapova.
Djokovic on the other hand beat three at the Australian Open including defending champion Stan Wawrinka, two at Wimbledon including seven-time champion Roger Federer and another two at the US Open beating defending champion Marin Cilic and then once again Swiss 17-time grand slam champion Federer in the final.
Serena supporters will say that you can only beat what’s in front of you and that is true, but to say that Djokovic’s wins are not far more impressive and against better opposition is simply untrue. To add to this, although Djokovic didn’t win Roland Garros, he did beat nine-time champion Rafael Nadal in the quarter-finals, one of only two players to ever beat him there. In their Grand Slam campaign losses Williams lost to World #43 Roberta Vinci in New York while Djokovic lost to world #4 Wawrinka in Paris, a more accomplished opponent by any measure.
While majors are the pinnacle of tennis, there are other events outside of them and once again Djokovic comes out on top in results. Since the start of the Australian Open the Serb is yet to lose before the final of any event and that includes an outstanding 11 titles, 6 of those being Masters and another the elite season ending World Tour Finals event in London. He’s actually only lost to three different players, perhaps unsurprisingly the current World #2, #3 and #4 since the start of the Australian Open. In contrast, the American only won two events outside of slams this year, and, unlike Djokovic, did not play another tournament match after the US Open.
At all levels of competition the ATP #1 had a better more impressive season, there are far too many statistics to back it up, let alone the ones I haven’t mentioned such as having the most ranking points ever and most wins over top ten players in a year (31). By contrast, Williams only beat six top 10 ranked players this season.
There is however a simple reason why Serena has won Sports Illustrated sportsperson of the year over Djokovic, the fact she’s American.
The award is given by an American sports magazine with mostly American editors choosing, with that in mind they clearly show bias towards American sportsmen and sportswomen over Europeans, regardless of merit alone.
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