StudyTheGreats

I watched a detailed documentary on Serena last year and I can tell you that although she’s the undisputed GOAT of female tennis, we don’t really talk about the other side of her story; what it really cost We talk about 23 Grand Slams. We talk about the woman who dominated a sport for two decades and made it look inevitable. That's the version of Serena Williams the world put on the poster. But I've been sitting with the other version. The one who walked onto professional tennis courts as a teenager and watched the crowd go quiet in the wrong way. The quiet of discomfort. She was too muscular, they said. Too loud. Too much. The tennis establishment had a very clear picture of what a champion was supposed to look like, and Serena didn't fit it. They didn't just say it quietly either. Journalists wrote it. Commentators said it on air. Opponents implied it. The sport looked at her unique body and called it a problem. She was a fourteen year old girl! Her father Richard coached both sisters from a Compton court with cracked concrete and a shopping cart full of used tennis balls. No pathway that the sport had designed for people like them. The whole system was built for someone else. Serena walked into it anyway, like she hadn't been told the rules and owned it. And then 1999 happened. US Open. 17 years old. First Grand Slam. Nobody expected it. For me, here’s the part that actually matters: She never stopped fighting the narrative while simultaneously fighting the opponent. Two battles, every single match. One against the woman on the other side of the net. One against a world that spent twenty years finding new reasons she didn't belong. Doping accusations with no evidence. Dress codes targeting her specifically. A US Open final where she was penalised for showing too much emotion. She had a pulmonary embolism. Nearly died after giving birth. Came back and reached a Grand Slam final. The most decorated tennis player of her generation. Spent her entire career being told she was too much. She was exactly enough. Has she been perfect? No…just like every other human being. The flaw the world projected onto her became the fire she never let go out. Every slight, every column, every raised eyebrow at her body - she remembered all of it. Took it into every training session. Every final. Result = 🐐 status. Still my favorite page rn @StudyTheGreatz

Some are called to just do it.

The blinding effect of greatness isn’t talked about much. The entities that fail were once blinded by momentary success.

Steve Jobs refused to put a licence plate on his car and notoriously parked in the handicapped space at Apple. Every single day. For years. Why? Because he simply decided the rules did not apply to him. That petty, embarrassing smallness existed inside the same man who gave the world the iPhone, iPod, The Mac. He abandoned his daughter Lisa for the first nine years of her life. Looked a DNA test in the face and told a court he was sterile to avoid paying child support. The man who was obsessed with beautiful design couldn't find it in himself to embrace the beauty of fatherhood. He cried many times to get what he wanted. Former Apple employees describe a man who weaponised emotions the way other people use logic. If the emotion didn't work, the humiliation started. He told brilliant engineers their work was garbage. Not bad. Not close. Garbage. In front of rooms full of people. He took credit for ideas that weren't his. This wasn't spin. His reality distortion field wasn't just something he switched on for others - he eventually turned it on himself. When doctors found the tumour, he refused surgery for nine months. Tried fruit diets and spiritual healers while the cancer grew. The same man who never accepted limitations from the world outside him couldn't accept a biological truth about his own body. This is what boggles my mind: Every single one of those flaws - the delusion, the cruelty, the messianic certainty that reality bends to will - was the same engine that built Apple from a garage into the most valuable company in human history. Same magic touch that made Pixar what it is. He’d forever remain one of the GOATs in my books, but studying him exposes what has become a pattern as I’ve studied other greats - ALL our heroes were and are flawed humans. Easily one of my favorite pages rn @StudyTheGreatz

No, you don’t really want to be like your heroes. Arguably the greatest entrepreneur of all time, yet one of the most twisted minds to exist.

Hey X, I’m a new account dedicated to studying the greatest humans to ever walk this planet. The focus isn’t their achievements but their human side - their flaws, their errors, and how they became inevitable. Who would you like to see as a case study?

Controversial Question: Would Michael Jackson have reached his full potential without his Father?

Michael Jackson delivering the greatest cover of all time at just 10 years old. He was destined to be the 🐐.

Welcome to the world of the flawed. I watched a documentary on Leonardo da Vinci recently, and I kept waiting for the part where they talk about how great he was. The paintings, the inventions, the genius; You know the story they always tell. But what got me was something else entirely. The man rarely finished anything. The Last Supper took three years. His patrons were begging him. Writing letters. Threatening him. He would disappear for days, show up, stare at the wall, add one brushstroke, and leave again. They genuinely thought something was wrong with him. And there’s the part nobody talks about - Leonardo was illegitimate. His mother abandoned him. He was barred from every professional institution in Florence. The guilds, the academies, everything a talented young man was supposed to enter. The system looked at him and said no. Why? Because of who his parents were. So he did something that changed history. He kinda stopped reading what other men had written and started looking at things directly. Birds. Water. The human body. He dissected over 30 corpses. Many of his moves were illegal, but whatever was driving the guy was too strong. His notebooks were an absolute mess. Seven thousand pages. Written in mirror script so people couldn't steal his ideas. Jumping from how birds fly to how water moves to the architecture of the human heart - his mind was always on overdrive. The most creative human being who ever lived. His exclusion is what made him observe instead of repeat patterns. What If they had let him in, he probably would have learned what everyone else learned and produced what everyone else produced. The rejection forced him to see the world differently. The obsession kept him hungry for 67 years. He died at 67 and his last words were an apology. He said he had offended God because his work never reached the quality it should have. The greatest of all time. Still felt like he wasn't enough. Again, welcome to the world of the flawed.

@Arsenal_Folio 🙌🏾

🚨💣 | 𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆: Jurrien Timber is BACK 🔥😁

@TNTSportsUS What a fashion icon

Naomi Osaka's kit for Day 5 of #RolandGarros is 🔥✨

The creator and his art. Leonardo Da Vinci 🐐.