Won For The Aged

With power, finesse and sheer will Roger Federer and Serena Williams, both 35, became Australian Open champs and served notice that they're still at the top of their game.

- L. Jon Wertheim

IN SUMMER of 1981, Raiders of the Lost Ark reigned at the box office, Hall and Oates infected us with a string of objectively awful but undeniably catchy pop hits, and President Ronald Reagan, in his first year on the job, enjoyed encouraging popularity. It was a hell of a season for tennis, too, though that had nothing to do with John McEnroe and Tracy Austin winning the U.S. Open.

Under unfathomably, almost comically, different circumstances, the two best players in tennis came into the world. On Aug. 8, 1981, Roger Federer was born in Basel, Switzerland, to parents so fiercely middle class that they would have giggled at the notion that their only son would become a professional athlete, much less a star. The following month, in Saginaw, Mich., Serena Williams was loosed upon the world, a child who, according to her father, was conceived for the express purpose of becoming a tennis champion.

Their backgrounds, their career paths, their dispositions, their entire modes of being . . . contrast sharply. But Federer and Williams also share a remarkable symmetry. Ultimately, they arrived at the same place: not merely champions, but transcendent figures who have redefined their line of work. And for all their gifts, their ultimate validation might be their longevity. At age 35, here they are, still at the peak of their profession, making balloon animals out of time.