Give me like 30 solid years to practice and I'm confident that I could narrowly snatch one point away from an elderly Serena Williams.
this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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Same, but only if I could also stop aging while Serena continues to. I think I might have a chance with 30 years of practice playing against a 73 year old Serena, assuming I get lucky and she breaks a hip.
I mean, she just has to serve out once in a match to win the scenario in this question. I don't think it's that unreasonable.
Isn't a point in tennis what you get by winning 4 volleys in a round?
That's a game.
A point is a single rally. Then winning 4 points (gotta win by 2 though) wins you the game. First to 6 games (but also by 2) wins you the set. And then the match is usually best of 3 or 5 sets.
Statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged
I think you say that because you don't understand the actual point structure.
So first point is actually 15. But some people like to just say 5 instead. Now if you both have a point, then you would say 15 all or 5 all. After that, the next point is 30. If you're tied it's 30 all. Now the next point is, you got it, 40. If you're tied, you would obviously say, duece. Now if you score a point, after having 3 points, which is called 40, and you would have more than 2 points than your opponent, then you have won the game, which is the name of a set of points and does not mean you won the whole game. But if you would have 1 more point than your opponent after scoring a point after your 3rd point, then instead of getting a game, you get advantage. You need to score 1 more point to win the game, which is just a set of points and not the whole game. If you have advantage, and your opponent scores a point then you lose your advantage, and it's right back to duece, which is what you say when both players have 40, which is actually 3 points.
Easy right?
You say the first point is 15, but you must remember that both players start on an egg, called love.
Lol FML. I totally forgot about love.
Out of context that would be a truly bleak statement.
I don't love this.
Let me tell you about cricket next...
I don't know. Am I aging too or just her?
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/survey-results/daily/2019/07/12/ce84b/1
Other fun stuff from the same poll:
- Scots are the least likely to think they could do it, and also the least likely to say "don't know". We know where we stand apparently
- 2% of 65+ year old people think they could do it, although 2% is getting well into the territory where it could just be insincere answers
2% insincere/ random/ did not understand the question/ thought the question was actually asking the opposite... that's pretty low. Usually hard to get that under 6-7%.
Yeah 3-4% is the lizard men quotient
The lizardmen quotient probably goes down with age.
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I mean I guess there's a non-negligible chance of her hitting a double fault...
So she tries to T them up on the first serve and it goes long. The second serve will surely be a dink over the net because the opponent is nothing for her to fear so they rush the net , return the serve and in an instant their asshole is the size of a tennis ball
I guess there is a better than 0 chance but I wouldn't bet against her
Man, unless you're on the pro tour, you're getting handled easily. Tennis is about angle knowledge and of course you have to be in top condition.
Serena wipes the floor with the avg man and college level tennis players of all genders.
I have played a lot of tennis. The only way I win a point against Serena is if she double faults.
I dunno man, I might accidentally score a point.
Yeah that's what I'm thinking. I can also get a point off of djocovic, just give me a lot of chances. If we're talking about a point in one game, nah to either. A point in a 3 set match? I think so.
The actual question asked was "Do you think if you were playing your very best tennis, you could win a point off Serena Williams?"
This leaves huge ambiguity. How many points are we playing? What's the setting? Does it count if she double faults, or only if I win the point by something I do?
If it's a full set, and any point I get regardless of why I get it counts, I think 12% is probably low. Consider the huge advantages most amateurs have of doing very confusing things, and possibly getting some mercy after its clear there's no true competition to be had, I would give quite high odds that she loses at least one point.
If this is more like a sudden death, "I'll bust out my secret serve, and get a point off her in one shot", 12% is stupid high.
I have no idea which of those (or the myriad middle options...) People thought they were answering, but for a male with typical bone density, a 120mph serve wouldn't be enough to drive through your skull, but it will give her a point if it hits you in the face. You have nearly 500 milliseconds to dip out of the way, and let it go sailing over your head for that single fault.
Every time I see this I think, if I was asked my response would be “has she just had a limb amputated? If so, probably still no but maybe.”
Why say horse when squirrel exist? I don't mean to toot my own petard or anything, but I could beat the shit out of the average squirrel.
maybe in Wii Tennis 🤷♀️
Buddy, you think 23-time grand slam winner Serena Williams isn't going to dust your ass at wii tennis too? 😤
a single point? sure, if we play enough i will at some point get lucky🤷
Statistically she'll double miss her serve one day.
The minimum number of points to win a 3-set tennis match is 48, winning 6-0, 6-0. If my only goal is to win a single point, I would give myself decent odds at distracting any given pro tennis player enough for them to lose one point. Across the two sets I might even be able to get two points if I'm really lucky.
However, I don't plan on breaking my arm by trying to return any of their shots, so even in the (still probably majority) case where I don't even win one point, at least my embarrassment will be short and controlled.
I kind of feel like people are neglecting some of this here. Like, yes, any pro tennis player would absolutely crush me. I would never get close to taking a game. However, even pro players lose points because they make mistakes. I don't need to claim that I'm any match for a pro in order to claim that there's a non-zero chance that they could blunder a single point.
Saying that it's absolutely absurd that I could take a single point against someone like Serena is essentially saying that it's absurd to suggest that there's a decent chance Serena could make a mistake once in 48 points.
I honestly don't know how good those odds would be, but it doesn't seem crazy to me to suggest it could happen in around 1/10 matches.
Fingers crossed they double fault at least once in their 24 service points, although I imagine they wouldn't even use second serve power against some bozo
If my only goal is to win a single point, I would give myself decent odds at distracting any given pro tennis player
Taking your underwear off may work.
My mom could kick my ass at tennis ( ...in her prime, she's in her eighties now), I don't need to ask Ms. Williams to do it.
Mom was, in fact, a tennis enthusiast when I was a kid and played weekly, and even at my best I had a crap backhand.
Serena Williams would demolish me.
This is one of my favorite tweets of all time
I only need one point in a whole match? I'd just hope for a double-fault.
That's probably the best bet for us regular folk, but the problem is that she probably knows that she really doesn't need to go anywhere near as hard as she could to get every serve past us
A 12 percenter eh?
Men who don’t even play tennis fantasising about some monster power serve. That would get chopped off instantly.
Serena: Omae ha mou shindeiru Jason: NANI
Since they go 15 points at a time, hoping to score at least 1 seems pretty humble to me.
If you ever want to kill an hour, ask a guy if he thinks he can best a grizzly bear in a fight, ask for an explanation why or why not
One in eight men who responded to the survey. Come on now probably only one in eight men even play tennis. More men play basketball for fucks sake
Probably not a tonne of people responding to a British polling agency's survey play basketball, but otherwise yeah. If we go by viewrship figures for the men's final at Wimbledon, a little over an eighth of the country watches a game of tennis once a year
Oh, I figured it was American because I am and she is. But yeah, probably not many Brits ballin
Apparently our national men's team is ranked 48th, in between fellow basketball titans Senegal and Sweden
I guess we don't really have a British equivalent that is a household name recognisable to non-fans in the way the Williams sisters are. We've got a few men who fit the bill, but that obviously doesn't work for the question. If you need to name a woman that everyone immediately knows is really god damn good at tennis, one of the Williamses is probably gonna be the go-to regardless of where you ask
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