Serena Williams will be back.
Count on it.
After her humbling semifinal loss to Naomi Osaka at the Australian Open, the questions came hard and fast. Had Osaka’s slashing forehands shouldered Williams to the edge of retirement?
Was this the last time Williams would grace the sea-blue courts of the Australian Open, a tournament she has won seven times?
At one level, those questions made sense.
What more, after all, does she have to prove?
There has never been, nor is there likely to be, another champion like Serena, who rose from Compton, Calif.