“...she simply overpowers a lot of her opponents and they can’t do that.”
Every couple of years a new someone comes on the surface that does it a little better than the original did. Happens in all sports. Here’s a few:
Golf - Woods
Skiing - Vonn
Hockey - Gretzky
Tennis - Navratilova
Baseball HR hitting - Aaron
Football running back - Brown
Soccer - Pele
The above were all great at what they did and were considered by most the best in their game. But youth, training tactics, and let’s face it, drug intervention, equipment innovations, sport tactics, and just someone coming up that does it better than “the old dog” are coming out of the woodwork all the time.
Chrissy got out and went to the booth as did both McEnroes. It may be time for Williams to consider working the empire she created outside the lines and set up that nest egg for full retirement. Athletes make too much money to compete as long as they do. They just let their ego over run their physical capacity and aging that causes more pain than when they were young.
And any one of the pros on a given day could do it a little better. Jack Nicklaus is a perfect example. During his career, in majors as that is what he was most successful in, Nicklaus finished second in 19 majors and had 48 top-three finishes at Slams. There was always someone out there that just play, or got lucky, a little bit better than Jack that many times. You find it in many careers, especially as they age. Time marches on.
wy69
Winning a golf tournament is one of the biggest crapshoots in sports. Seventy-two holes and it often comes down to one shot. Of course there are the occasional run-away wins when one player is just so ON that he makes it look easy. But generally speaking the game is very humbling.
And those runner-up and Top 3 finishes are almost as impressive as his wins. He was always in the mix for over twenty years. I was reading an interview with the late great Arnold Palmer recently and he said it was so hard to maintain one's edge, that competitive desire or unknown. Arnold never won another major after the 1964 Master's but he played on for a long time.