Sometimes it's so obvious that there's no need to even talk about it. For example, what did anyone else do in the other 51 weeks in 2008 that could've trumped what Michael Phelps did in Beijing? Or even last year, when Madison Bumgarner won the World Series all by himself? Or going all the way back to the first-ever Sportsman of the Year in 1954, who other than Roger Bannister could it have been?
This wasn't one of those years. There were a handful of worthy candidates. I actually narrowed it down to five before ultimately deciding on Serena Williams. Jordan Spieth had a tremendous year, winning the first two golf majors, and Stephen Curry became a superstar while leading the Warriors to the NBA title.
It's was really a three-horse race, though. American Pharoah had a lot of support online (the horse won the SI fan vote by a wide margin), and rightfully so. After 37 years, we finally had another Triple Crown winner! That horse did what some were beginning to believe was the impossible, and won over America in the process.
Speaking of winning over America, how about Carli Lloyd? The last time the USA won the Women's World Cup, the entire team was named Sportswomen of the Year in 1999. But if there's a seminal figure of this year's championship run, it's Carli Lloyd. She'd already scored the game-winner in two Olympic finals, but that hat trick in the first 16 minutes of the World Cup Final, capped by that she-just-did-what?! goal from midfield, put her on a completely different level. There was no question who the MVP of the World Cup was. Or who's taken over for the retired Abby Wambach as the U.S. Women's National Team's biggest star.
Carli Lloyd made it close. I'll admit it. She's a deserving runner-up for this honor. But every time I thought about the Sportsperson of the Year for 2015, it all kept coming back to Serena and her season for the ages. Or, if it wasn't for the ages, it came pretty damn close.
Over the last few weeks, SI has been running a series on its Sportsman of the Year candidates, and the one about Serena really put her year in perspective. Just imagine for a second if, like Novak Djokovic, her loss had happened at the French Open instead of the US Open. Our perception of her year would be completely different. But since she was upset in the US Open semifinals when she was two wins shy of completing the first calendar-year Grand Slam in nearly 30 years (and winning her fifth consecutive Major), her season is suddenly a disappointment? That's ludicrous!
Not only is Serena Williams the most dominant figure in her sport, it's not even close. The points gap between her and No. 2 Simona Halep is larger than the gap between Halep and the lowest-ranked player on tour. Or, to put it another way, Serena Williams can sit out all of 2016 (which we all know she won't do with two Olympic gold medals to defend), and she'll still be ranked No. 1!
Winning the Grand Slam in tennis is one of the hardest things to do in sports. You have to win seven matches in the mid-summer heat of Melbourne. In January. In either your first or second tournament of the year after taking two months off. Then you have to grind it out on the slow, red clay of Paris before completely changing gears for Wimbledon three weeks later. If you manage to win all three of those, it's the lights, the massive stadium, the loudness that is the US Open. Oh, and all the pressure that comes with it.
Serena had already won four in a row. Her first "Serena Slam" came in 2002-03, when she was in her prime and beat Venus in all four finals. But this one was different. In so many ways. For starters, she was 22 years old then! Now she's 34! Tennis players aren't supposed to get better with age. During the 2002-03 Serena Slam, she bludgeoned everybody to death. This time, she won the French Open despite being sick and going to a third set five times in seven matches. At Wimbledon, she faced match point against a British player and the British crowd in the fourth round, yet somehow pulled it out en route to another Wimbledon title. That completed her second career "Serena Slam," 12 years after the first, and made her the first player to even go to New York with a chance for the calendar-year Grand Slam since Steffi Graf completed the feat in 1988.
We all know that she didn't win the US Open. Thanks to Roberta Vinci, she came up two matches short. That doesn't make her 2015 season any less remarkable: a 53-3 record, including a 26-1 mark in the Slams; five titles, three of them in Majors; made at least the semifinals in nine of 10 tournaments played. Oh, and did I mention that her three Grand Slam titles brought her to 21 for her career, one shy of Graf for second all-time and three shy of Margaret Court's all-time record?
Without a doubt, Serena Williams is on the shortlist of greatest women's tennis players in history. And her dominant 2015 was perhaps her best season yet. What we're seeing from her, at an age when most players consider retirement, is completely remarkable. But it's more than that. It's special. It was a privilege to watch Serena Williams play tennis in 2015. And she won in such a way that you found yourself rooting for her, which hasn't always been the case throughout her career.
Her quest for the Grand Slam was the story of the year in tennis. And Serena embraced it. She didn't shy away it, mainly because she knew that's what everyone else wanted to talk about. When it didn't happen, she was disappointed, but she handled the loss with the same grace and dignity that she showed after all of those victories.
There's one last thing that makes Serena Williams stand out ahead of Carli Lloyd and American Pharoah. The Women's World Cup kept us enthralled all summer. But it was over in a month. American Pharoah made people care about the Triple Crown again. But that's done in five weeks. Serena Williams won from January til August. She was dominant from the start of the year all through the summer. We started talking about her possibly winning the Grand Slam after she won Australia, and that conversation didn't stop until that shocking loss in September. Nine months of brilliance. That's what made Serena Williams the Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year. And it's why she's my clear choice as the Joe Brackets Sportswoman of the Year.
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