If you believe Serena Williams's fans, the world No 1 answered her critics with the Stanford title win on Sunday.
In three of her four matches last week, she came up against top 20 players – Ana Ivanovic (No 10), Andrea Petkovic (No 18) and Angelique Kerber (No 7) – but only Ivanovic took a set off her.
It was her fourth title of the year, the most of any player on the WTA Tour in 2014, so it is not doomsday yet.
But questions still linger, and they will remain unanswered until she reaches New York for the defence of her US Open this month. Nobody is questioning her ability to win titles, but her performance at the grand slam tournaments – fourth round exit in Australia, second round in Paris and third round at Wimbledon – do put a question mark over her ability to add to her 17 majors.
The query is whether she can remain dominant, and focused, across two weeks.
Another question hangs over her exit from Wimbledon, where she blamed illness for having to pull out of the doubles with her sister Venus after she had gone out of the singles in the third round.
She repeated that “virus” line ahead of her Stanford campaign. But which virus? Surely such a debilitating “virus” must have a name.
She had no medical tests (she said she will get it done “after the end of the season”) and took a holiday instead. Now, miraculously, the virus has vanished.
Intriguing indeed. But then, there have been many such moments in Williams’s career.
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