Serena Williams is the greatest athlete in a generation - so why doesn't she get the credit she

But she wasn't on Wednesday October 22nd. Against Simona Halep in the group stages of the WTA Finals, she didn't even resemble a professional tennis player. It was the worst tennis match of her career. She won two games. She had a bagel unceremoniously shoved down her throat, losing it 6-0 6-2.

“To be quite frankly honest,” she whispered afterwards, with the vague hint of a threat. “I'm looking forward to our next meeting because she is making me go home and work hard and particularly train for her.”

It turns out, Serena didn't have to go home. The re-match arrived just three matches later in the final. She hadn't been in her best form all week, but for Serena Williams, when stone cold revenge is on the line, form is irrelevant.

Ninety minutes later, the score read 6-3 6-0. The names were switched, the trophy was resting in Williams' hands for the third successive year. She had done it again.

Many believe that 2014 has been, at best, a poor or average year for Williams. Serena, for her part, has spent the entire second half of the year incessantly proclaiming her excitement for 2015.

Even after she captured the US Open without a single set lost, it was clear she was completely over it all - ready for a clean state and a new season.

Oh, such a disastrous year it was. After all, she only won the US Open – a legendary Navratilova and Evert-equalling 18th slam. She only triumphed at the WTA Finals. She was only crowned the Miami, Cincinnati and Rome Masters champions. She only decimated the strong Brisbane and Stanford tournaments. She only became the first player to finish number one two years in a row since Steffi Graf in 1996.

Even in this so-called off year, she is currently achieving things that have literally never been seen, done or believed possible in the history of women's tennis by a player at such an advanced tennis age.

In football, people spend their time debating that embarrassingly thick narrative pitting one of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo as an “alien” from outer space and the other as a mere mortal. In tennis, a Federer backhand winner stops the world.

Little true praise ever comes the way of Serena Williams. All people can muster up for her is baseless accusations, some kind of offensive slur or else the most begrudging acknowledgement possible.

The reasons are clear enough.

Just a week ago, for example, the Russian Davis and Fed Cup captain, Shamil Tarpischev, was slammed, fined and suspended by the WTA after referring to Serena and her sister as the “Williams brothers” on a talk-show.

The sexism and racism issues are obvious. Sometimes overt, other times subconscious but always present. As is the fact that being a muscular, black, female athlete who is unapologetic about her appearance and personality means she has had so many crosses against her name from the inception of her career.

But on a sporting level, these slurs and general descriptions are used as devices to dismiss her achievements. People will acknowledge her success, but not, for example, without reducing her talents to her simply possessing superior strength to her rivals.

The reality is that Williams is probably is the most talented player, male or female, the world has ever seen.

The two pivotal weapons in tennis are the first two strokes of every single point – the serve and return. Everyone has a strength and a weakness in them; the very best can hope for two moderate strengths. Serena is the best in the world at both.

There are a slew of players who hit harder than her, but what sets her apart is the unrivalled consistency, the relentless depth of those powerful strokes and the tactical brain behind them.

She was also once one of the fastest players in women's tennis history. That speed is diminished and more inconsistent at 33 years old, but there are still plenty of times when she moves at a frightening pace.

Also in her unrivalled arsenal are her trademark deft angles, the best since Monica Seles, which were the driving force behind her French Open victory on her unfavoured clay last season.

What gives her the edge and ensures she is the greatest athlete of our generation, though, is context; the barriers she has broken, the hardships she has overcome, the unprecedented longevity, that constant unbelievable ability to prove every doubter wrong time after time after time.

Few athletes have recovered from the brink of death to enjoy the success she has done since her pulmonary embolism in 2011.

No athlete in recent memory has achieved quite a moment like when she arrived at the 2007 Australian Open ranked 81, extremely unfit, inactive from depression and facing such shockingly public criticism from the likes of Chris Evert, Pat Cash and many others.

She would shed all that weight with every match over the fortnight, battling past five seeded players in six matches before demolishing Maria Sharapova, the woman all claimed to have snatched her place, in the final.

The fact that she is still standing today is legendary enough. Nobody could have expected it. Retirement rumours surrounding the Williams sisters have circulated since as early as 2000, and the logical thought was that Serena would easily be outlived by all her rivals who cared more about tennis - who weren't consumed by a thousand other outside interests.

But just as she had the last laugh with little Simona Halep on Sunday, she continues to have the last laugh in a world where her only old-time rival still standing in singles is her own sister. She, the best athlete in decades, always does.