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For the first time in more than three-and-a-half years, the top-ranked player in womens tennis is not named Serena Williams. The long-standing No. 1, who held that ranking for 186 weeks, hampered by a knee injury, lost in the US Open semifinals Thursday night to 10th-ranked Karolina Pliskova. And with it, she also lost her shot to break Steffi Grafs record for consecutive weeks atop the rankings.Until we get the opportunity to watch Williams play in another major -- which wont be until the Australian Open in January 2017 -- all conversation around her will invariably involve some sort of assessment of her career and legacy, attempting to put into historical context one of the greatest athletes weve ever seen.The key word there is athlete, not womens tennis player. As Williams herself said after her third-round victory last Saturday, Im a female, and Im an athlete. And Im an athlete first.Too often the coverage of Williams qualifies her as one of, if not the greatest, female athletes of all time -- something were?just as guilty of here at espnW. Its certainly important to acknowledge Williamss womanhood. Her femininity has constantly been denied due to that toxic mix of sexism and racism known as misogynoir -- her hair, her body, her demeanor and even her sartorial choices are endlessly scrutinized, while both her strength and her sexuality have been used against her.But the focus on Williamss gender when evaluating her athletic career usually isnt about humanizing or empowering her. Most likely, its said with a wink and a nod to separate her from the men.The subtext is, Yeah, shes the GOAT, but at a girls game. Framing it in this way does more than merely undermine her success. It spares people from needing to consider her among legendary male athletes without comparing her to them.A common tactic in disparaging womens sports is to argue that female players wouldnt be able to beat men in one-on-one competition. This, of course, entirely misses the point: Williams is in the category of all-time greats who similarly dominated their field. Nobodys going around asking if Mariano Rivera would beat Muhammad Ali in the ring.?The need to uphold male athletes as the standard-bearers is often excused away by some lazy argument about quality of competition, but its really about the inability to see sports as something other than just for men. In a column for VICE, Rick Paulas argues that those looking for a woman to beat a man within the same sports are overlooking the fact that most of the major sports were designed to suit male skill sets:I tend to cringe when ascribing such specific attributes to broad gender groups, and I disagree with the implication that if women cant run or swim or serve as fast (Williams can, by the way), that makes womens sports inherently less worthy. But the idea that sports were designed exclusively with men in mind continues to segregate sports as a space thats not meant for women.And the tactic used to justify that is the straw man of direct comparison. A male athlete is simply an athlete, the natural order of things, while a female athlete is an anomaly -- and a supposedly inferior one, at that. Its this thinking that continues to stand in the way of equal pay for women players while holding back the confidence, support and investment needed to help womens sports continue to grow.It doesnt help that those covering sports, including tennis, continue to be overwhelmingly men. According to FiveThirtyEights Carl Bialik, men comprise 73 percent of journalists covering the US Open this year. Thats how you get a reporter telling Andy Murray hes the first tennis player to win two Olympic gold medals, and Murray having to remind him that Venus and Serena have won four each.While this might be an extreme example, it goes to show how separating men and women athletes in our minds can serve to erase female players entirely from our consciousness.But women athletes arent going away, and its up to those of us in the media to continue to nag people into acknowledging their existence and worth. It might be a blatantly self-serving move, but Nikes new campaign declaring Williams the greatest athlete ever is meaningful for both contextual and material reasons. The hesitance of major companies to see marketing value in female players has been a major barrier to the growth of womens sports, and here you have one of the biggest sponsors in sports declaring the supremacy of an athlete who happens to be a woman.At the end of the day, if youve somehow managed to forget one of the greatest athletic careers weve ever seen, the only person who missed out is you. Rio and Flushing notwithstanding, Serenas numbers speak for themselves, and the utter electricity with which she lights up the court is undeniable. And she hasnt just been an incredible boon to the profile of womens sports; she has managed to keep tennis relevant in the U.S. during years of futility by American men. Its not a far cry to imagine a young boy at the Williams sisters Los Angeles tennis academy dreaming of one day becoming Serena. We should all be so lucky. Cheap Cincinnati Bengals Jerseys . Jay Feely kicked a 41-yard field goal in overtime, and the Cardinals edged the Tennessee Titans 37-34 in overtime after blowing a 17-point lead late in the fourth quarter. Wholesale Football Jerseys Outlet . The nimble-footed quarterback got his wish, dashing through the snow and a weary defence all the way into the NCAA record book. http://www.wholesalejerseysnfloutlet.com/cheap-indianapolis-colts-jerseys/ . -- The St. Johns IceCaps weathered a wild first period with the help of goaltender Jussi Olkinuora, before finding offensive inroads in the second. Cheap Washington Redskins Jerseys . In the response filed Wednesday to the complaint by 30-year-old Alexander Bradley, attorneys say the former University of Florida player is invoking his Fifth Amendment right that protects people from incriminating themselves. Cheap Chicago Bears Jerseys .R. Smith realized how easily basketball can be taken from him, and he wasnt going to take his place in the NBA for granted anymore.Rome, Italy (Sports Network) - Wimbledon runner-up Agnieszka Radwanska was a second-round upset victim Tuesday at the Italian Open. Romanian qualifier Simona Halep upended the fourth-seeded Pole in 6-7 (2-7), 6-1, 6-2 fashion on the red clay at Foro Italico. Another second-round affair saw eighth-seeded former Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova get past German slugger Sabine Lisicki, 6-4, 0-6, 7-5. Meanwhile, former world No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki went by way of a first-round upset, as Serb Bojana Jovanovski doused the 10th-seeded Dane 2-6, 6-4, 7-6 (7-5). Wozniacki blew a 5-2 lead in the deciding tiebreak. Wozniacki has been struggling on clay, losing in the first round at last weeks Madrid Open and in her first match in Stuttgart, Germany last month. Another opening-round upset of a former No. 1 came when Radwanskas younger sister, Urszula, took out 15th-seeded Serb Ana Ivanovic 6-3, 2-6, 6-2; and yet another seed was sent packing when Spaniard Carla Suarez Navarro toppled No. 11 Nadia PPetrova of Russia 3-6, 6-2, 7-6 (7-1).dddddddddddd Four other seeds avoided opening-round upsets, as No. 12 Russian Maria Kirilenko rolled past Spaniard Anabel Medina Garrigues 6-3, 6-3; No. 13 Italian favorite Roberta Vinci overcame Russian Elena Vesnina 6-7 (2-7), 7-5, 6-4; No. 14 Slovak Dominika Cibulkova fought back to beat Frances Kristina Mladenovic 1-6, 6-2, 6-2; and No. 16 American Sloane Stephens drubbed long-time Italian favorite Flavia Pennetta 6-3, 6-3. Medina Garrigues is the WTAs active leader in clay-court titles with 10. Additional first-round wins came for Chinese Zheng Jie, Swiss Romina Oprandi, German Julia Goerges, Belgian Yanina Wickmayer, and Americans Christina McHale and Varvara Lepchenko. McHale bested Italian Karin Knapp 7-5, 6-2, while Lepchenko leveled Ukrainian Lesia Tsurenko 6-4, 6-2 on Day 2. Goerges is rewarded with a second-round match against former world No. 1 Victoria Azarenka. The winner of this $2.4 million event will collect $445,000. 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