Serena Williams honored after US Open first-round win. It's all about tennis from now on | Opinion

The match ended, and carpet rolled out onto the court at Arthur Ashe Stadium and here came Billie Jean King, Gayle King and a tribute video narrated by Oprah. Serena Williams’ husband, Alexis Ohanian, brought daughter Olympia down as well for family photos. Mother and daughter wore matching black outfits encrusted with sparkling diamonds.

As retirement ceremonies go, this one was about as good as it gets. The only catch is that as of Monday night, after beating Danka Kovinic, 6-3, 6-3, in the first round of the U.S. Open, Williams wasn’t quite retired.

"I didn’t expect any of this," she said.

But why wait for the actual end? As it was, with all kinds of celebrities in the house and Williams beaming after her best performance of the year, the celebration seemed perfectly timed.

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Though she didn’t say it quite so explicitly in a Vogue article earlier this month, the 40-year-old Williams more or less let everyone know the U.S. Open would be the final time we’d see her compete on a tennis court. It would close the book on nearly a quarter-century of excellence at the very same tournament where she won her first Grand Slam title as a 17 year old. It would serve as the ideal stage to acknowledge how much she’s meant to the sport.

But these kinds of goodbyes can be tricky in tennis. Aging legends almost never get a chance to walk off as winners, and yet there’s no real way to know when that final loss will happen or what it will look like.

For almost the entirety of her career, but particularly these last few years, Williams has held herself to an impossible standard. Even in a pre-tournament news conference this year at Wimbledon, having not played an official singles match for a full calendar year, was asked what would constitute a good outcome at the tournament.

"You know the answer to that," she said with a laugh, insinuating that only the title would be enough. "Come on now."

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The reality, though, hasn’t been nearly as kind to Williams. In three tournaments prior to the U.S. Open, her level of tennis and fitness hasn’t been nearly good enough to compete with top players. Even for one of the great competitors in the history of the sport, this is what getting old looks like — and usually it’s not pretty.

Barring something almost miraculous, that’s how it will end for Williams sooner or later in this tournament. And though her eventual loss might be expected, it will be a downer for everyone in New York and a difficult moment to handle even for someone who has won 23 Grand Slam singles titles.

Even if Williams has accepted that she isn’t likely to win this final U.S. Open, it wouldn’t be fair to ask her to process it in public.

That’s what was so smart about the timing of Monday’s ceremony. Sure, Williams could have lost to Kovinic, which would have changed the entire tenor of the tributes that had been collected to honor her. But she didn’t.

And now, all of the retirement pomp and circumstance is out of the way. From here on out, it's just about the tennis.

"It’s been a very hard decision because when you’re passionate about something and you love something so much, I think it’s hard to walk away," Williams said on the court. "That’s been the case for me, so I've been trying to decide for a little while what to do."

Williams is not going to offer much more introspection about the process of this decision or spend a lot of time ruminating on what retirement is going to mean. She has not done any lengthy media appearances since the Vogue article and declined a pre-tournament press conference at the U.S. Open. She has explained her decision in the best way she can, but you can surmise she doesn’t want to dwell on it too much or answer the same questions over and over.

As Williams said herself, leaving competitive tennis isn’t something she's looking forward to. But it’s something that makes sense in the larger context of her life as a mother, an entrepreneur and a player who is losing the battle with Father Time just as 100 percent of her predecessors have.

It’s hard to know how much longer Williams will stick around in this tournament. Sure, she could beat No. 2 seed Anett Kontaveit on Wednesday and get to the weekend. It’s more likely she’s reached the end of the line. Williams will fight to the end, but she now seems more sanguine and realistic about what she can do and where she fits in the sport.

"It’s time for me to evolve," she said.

At least she got to have that moment Monday, when the entire sports world could celebrate a victory with Williams and show appreciation without the sadness that will eventually come. But that’s a problem for another day. For now, a retirement ceremony without an official retirement is as good as it’s going to get.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Serena Williams farewell tribute comes after opening-round US Open win