New Delhi, July 2 -- LONDON - The moment arrived, improbably, at 6-all in the second-set tiebreak.

Serena Williams, forty-four years old and four years removed from competitive tennis, serving to stay in a match she had no business staying in, unloaded a 122-mile-per-hour ace that stung the baseline before Maya Joint could move. Centre Court rose. The sound was not the polite acknowledgment the All England Club reserves for good points; it was something louder and less composed, the kind that comes out when people realize they might be witnessing something they will talk about for a long time.

She won that tiebreak 8-6. She took the second set. Against all rational expectation, she had made it a match.

Then Joint broke her at 2-2 in th...