The Nike ad, embedded above and released Monday — timed to Serena's appearance at the 2018 U.S. Open in New York — is inspiring, but it's more than that. But imagery is not just for athletes. Serena shared the emotional ad and said, "If you don't dare to try and chase your dreams, you'll rob yourself the joy of doing it. Don't just dream it," Serena says in a tweet she published sharing the ad. Serena won her Open matches on Monday and Wednesday, and will play her sister, Venus Williams (for whom dad Richard was also an early coach) on Friday.
– Serena Williams went from training with her dad on the public courts in Compton to winning the US Open—six times so far. She's competing there again now, and in a new ad, Nike celebrates that incredible journey, Ad Age reports. The video combines shots of an adult Williams playing tennis with archival footage of a 9-year-old Williams and her dad on those Compton courts, complete with her dad saying in voiceover, "Be tough, just like you want to win. Just like you're at the US Open." PopSugar declares that the minute-long video "might as well be an extremely emotional short film," while Revelist calls it "goosebump-inducing." CNBC points to the "success hack" the ad illustrates: visualization. "If you can see it, you can be it."