Serena Williams

Her record of 23 grand slam singles titles in the Open era stands alone but Williams' tennis legacy goes far beyond statistics.

After giving birth at the age of 36, she returned and eventually compiled a run of four grand slam finals in six events late in her 30s. It began with the turbulence of teenage success, a US Open champion at 17 in 1999, then the two and a half years it took for her to win a second. Less credited are Serena Williams’s other defining qualities; her intelligence, her court sense, her ability to problem-solve under suffocating pressure and find a solution on the court. Considering the number of setbacks that Williams has been forced to reckon with because of injury, depression and life‑threatening illness, her longevity is hard to believe. At the 2017 Australian Open while pregnant with her daughter, Alexis Olympia, Williams surpassed Graf to secure the Open-era record of a 23rd grand slam title. Seven years ago, as Serena Williams continued to consolidate her career records and her claims as the greatest of all time, a reporter asked her to identify the all-time record in her sights.

PARIS, France, Aug 9 - US tennis great Serena Williams announced on Tuesday that "the countdown has begun" to her retirement from the sport.

I need to be two feet into tennis or two feet out.” “And I don’t know if I will be ready to win New York. But I’m going to try. I want to grow that family. I definitely don’t want to be pregnant again as an athlete. Alexis, my husband, and I have hardly talked about it; it’s like a taboo topic. Maybe the best word to describe what I’m up to is evolution.

The 23-time Grand Slam champion, who indicated in an essay for Vogue that she will retire after this month's U.S. Open, has earned $440 million across her ...

Many of Williams’ endorsements are likely to continue into her retirement, just as Sharapova has continued to promote Nike, Evian and Porsche. But her attention has increasingly turned to investing, primarily through Serena Ventures. The firm, which she formally announced in 2019 and which focuses on early-stage companies, has investments in more than 60 startups and announced in March that it had raised an inaugural fund of $111 million. Williams’ marketing success has paved the way for a new generation in women’s sports, including fellow tennis champion Naomi Osaka, who ranked 19th on this year’s highest-paid athletes with $59.2 million, including $58 million off the court, a record for a female athlete. When Sharapova retired in 2020 at 32, she had earned roughly $290 million off the court, more than $50 million behind Williams’ career total. In May, she landed at No. 31 in Forbes’ annual ranking of the world’s highest-paid athletes with $45.3 million—almost all of it from endorsements—despite having been sidelined by injuries for ten months. Sharapova outpaced her off the court for 11 straight years, for instance, even while Williams was piling up Grand Slams. But a late-career resurgence helped Williams end that streak in 2016, and there’s no arguing with her longevity. Williams, a 23-time Grand Slam singles champion, expressed some frustration that she couldn’t solidify her claim as tennis’ greatest of all-time by passing Margaret Court’s record of 24 major titles.

The rival Williams is most well-acquainted with, her sister Venus, owns seven Grand Slam titles and 49 singles titles throughout her career. Still, Serena ...

That is just three more than Serena Williams has won on her own. Steffi Graf is the only other woman to accomplish that feat. In 555 career matches against top-10 opponents, Williams owns a record of 435-120, which comes out to a jaw-dropping 78.0% win percentage. Perhaps the most impressive and lop-sided rivalry of Williams' career was against Maria Sharapova. Those two met 22 times throughout their careers, and Williams won a whopping 20 of them. The Grand Slam tournaments represent tennis' biggest stage, and Williams seems to love the spotlight they provide. Still, Serena Williams has frequently gotten the better of that matchup with a 19-12 record against Venus.

Serena Williams says she has never liked the word retirement, but that she is evolving away from tennis after winning 23 Grand Slams across her iconic ...

"Maybe she doesn't have the record of 24, but what she's accomplished as well as her back story to achieve what she's achieved. "No question about it, she is the greatest male or female tennis player at the moment. I'm a fan of them and I want to say thank you to them." "Unfortunately I wasn't ready to win Wimbledon this year," she added in the article. "I know there's a fan fantasy that I might have tied Margaret that day in London, then maybe beat her record in New York, and then at the trophy ceremony say, 'See ya!' I get that. You talk about tennis to a black person and it's the Williams sisters, that's just what it is. I looked up to them and I still do. Williams noted that her and her partner Alexis are trying for another child, and that she did not want to be pregnant as an athlete again. "When I tell people in the neighbourhood 'I'm a tennis player' they're like 'oh so you're trying to do that Williams sister thing?'. They're a staple. "Maybe the best word to describe what I'm up to is evolution. "I've been reluctant to admit that I have to move on from playing tennis. I've been thinking of this as a transition but I want to be sensitive about how I use that word, which means something very specific and important to a community of people.

Williams brought her own distinctive flair to tennis, challenging norms that governed fashion, power, decorum, race and gender.

She made that clear as she announced what she termed to be her “evolution,” which will include trying to have another child. Moreover, tennis is one of those games bound by a tradition of exclusion and uniformity. She wore clothing that flowed and swung, or that proudly showed her stomach and strong shoulders. And her comeback from pregnancy helped lead to an important rule change in women’s professional tennis — allowing players to enter tournaments based on their pre-pregnancy rankings for up to three years after giving birth. Yannick Noah, the mixed-race son of a Black Cameroonian father and white mother, won the French Open in 1983. Only the elite of the elite can change the way their sport is played. It is easy to forget that her championship journey, which came to include 23 Grand Slam singles titles, just shy of the record of 24 set by Margaret Court, began with a win at the U.S. Open in 1999. She had a knack, a hunger, a desire that demanded to be seen. After Williams’s power, speed and grit dispatched Hingis, 6-3, 7-6, tennis would never be the same. Announcing her plans to retire from tennis, Serena Williams said on Tuesday that she will focus her life far beyond sports, instead prioritizing being a mother, a fashion maker, a venture capitalist and much more. She has always done it her way, always operated on her own terms. She is a symbol.

The tennis great's decision is a stark reminder that even in 2022, women's time is still not our own. Serena Williams waving to the crowd at Wimbledon, ...

Williams’s retirement – and the fact that she has been so open about resenting that she must make this choice – are stark reminders that even in 2022, women’s time is often not our own. “I’m going to miss that version of me, that girl who played tennis,” Williams said at the end of her farewell. It is something that many women have dreamt about – the opportunity to be fully invested in our careers while we are at work and fully invested in our families outside of it. It is noticeable in sport because of its public visibility and because it is a physically demanding job. She is making a choice that women all over the world make every day: family or career? Except that in Williams’s mind, it would not be a fairytale.

With her dominant strokes and smart moves off the court, Williams helped redefine how to be a superstar athlete.

But the physical issues meant that she had taken a lot of breaks.” Williams picked her spots, and her 73 tour singles titles rank her fifth on the Open Era career list. Fourteen years later, she returned in the interest of bridging the divide and sending a message about second chances. It is easy to believe that she, at her best with the same equipment, would have beaten any woman at their best. But it is her tennis that has spoken loudest the longest. “Thousands of lives probably went down the wrong path trying to follow that,” said Rick Macci, the fast-talking coach who shaped the games of both Serena and Venus Williams in their youth under Richard’s watchful gaze. With her technically sound and forceful serve, she possessed perhaps the most decisive shot in the long history of the women’s game. She then talked about her 4-year-old daughter, Olympia. “I do want to push Olympia — not in tennis, but in whatever captures her interest,” Williams said. Serena says she takes no joy in that disparity, emphasizing that she would never have scaled such heights without her sister’s high-flying example. I worked hard, and I followed the rules.” “I got pushed hard by my parents,” Serena Williams wrote in the Vogue essay released on Tuesday announcing her impending retirement. But he also predicted that both would retire early to devote themselves to other endeavors.

Williams has strongly hinted at retirement. Here's how to watch what could be the final tournaments of her career.

TBD TBD TBD TBD TBD TBD

Serena Williams announced her imminent retirement from tennis. The 23-time grand-slam champion won her first singles match in more than a year at the ...

I need to be two feet into tennis or two feet out." Tennis being a predominantly white sport, it definitely helped a lot because I saw somebody look like me dominating the game and it made me believe that I could dominate, too [..] The Williams sisters story, not just Serena, with Mr. Williams and all that he's done for both of them, inspired my dad to continue to coach me and help me. The 40-year-old has become a force in the business world with her venture firm and other business activities including fashion lines. I didn't know it was going to be this U.S. Open or the next one. I definitely don't want to be pregnant again as an athlete. Williams revealed she was trying for another baby during her absence from tennis for a year until Wimbledon this summer.

American tennis player Serena Williams kisses her trophy after winning a match (against Martina Hingis. Williams kisses the 1999 US Open title. Getty/Jamie ...

And I'm going to miss you." I'm going to miss that version of me, that girl who played tennis. Serena won the title and instantly ran over to hug her father. "Now I have singles, doubles, actually everything there is to win in tennis. At the 1999 US Open, the 17-year-old starlet produced an astonishing run to lift the title. In winning the singles title at Wimbledon for the sixth time in 2015, Williams secured the second "Serena Slam" of her career. In August, she won her first singles match in 14 months at the National Bank Open in Toronto. The next day, she announced she would retire after the US Open. In winning the tournament in 2020, Williams became the first woman in tennis history to win a professional tournament in four separate decades. At the 2012 London Olympics, Williams became the first and only player in history to achieve that feat in both singles and doubles. A career "Golden Slam" is the name given to the achievement of having won every Grand Slam at least once and an Olympic gold medal. After winning her first singles title at Roland Garros, she went on to win Wimbledon and the US Open that same year, and then the 2003 Australian Open. The victory saw her become the first unseeded player to win the Australian Open since Christine O'Neil in 1978.

Saying “the countdown has begun,” 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams announced Tuesday she is ready to step away from tennis so she can turn her ...

Williams said she and Ohanian want to have a second baby, and wrote: “I definitely don’t want to be pregnant again as an athlete. And I don’t know if I will be ready to win New York,” Williams wrote in her essay. “Believe me, I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family. She was off the tour for about a year after getting injured during her first-round match at Wimbledon in 2021. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want that record. I’m torn: I don’t want it to be over, but at the same time I’m ready for what’s next.” They can wear what they want and say what they want and kick butt and be proud of it all.” That unflinching desire to be the best helped make her the best — and also sometimes got her into trouble with chair umpires during matches, most infamously during the 2018 U.S. Open final she lost to Naomi Osaka, a woman more than a decade younger who grew up idolizing Williams, as have so many of today’s players. “Serena Williams is a generational, if not multi-generational, talent who had a profound impact on the game of tennis, but an even greater influence on women in sports, business and society. I hate that I have to be at this crossroads,” she wrote. “There comes a time in life when we have to decide to move in a different direction. But now, the countdown has begun,” Williams, who turns 41 next month, wrote on Instagram. “I have to focus on being a mom, my spiritual goals and finally discovering a different, but just (as) exciting Serena. I’m gonna relish these next few weeks.”

Saying “the countdown has begun,” 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams announced Tuesday she is ready to step away from tennis so she can turn her ...

Williams said she and Ohanian want to have a second baby, and wrote: “I definitely don’t want to be pregnant again as an athlete. And I don’t know if I will be ready to win New York,” Williams wrote in her essay. “Believe me, I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family. She was off the tour for about a year after getting injured during her first-round match at Wimbledon in 2021. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want that record. I’m torn: I don’t want it to be over, but at the same time I’m ready for what’s next.” They can wear what they want and say what they want and kick butt and be proud of it all.” That unflinching desire to be the best helped make her the best — and also sometimes got her into trouble with chair umpires during matches, most infamously during the 2018 U.S. Open final she lost to Naomi Osaka, a woman more than a decade younger who grew up idolizing Williams, as have so many of today’s players. “Serena Williams is a generational, if not multi-generational, talent who had a profound impact on the game of tennis, but an even greater influence on women in sports, business and society. I hate that I have to be at this crossroads,” she wrote. “There comes a time in life when we have to decide to move in a different direction. But now, the countdown has begun,” Williams, who turns 41 next month, wrote on Instagram. “I have to focus on being a mom, my spiritual goals and finally discovering a different, but just (as) exciting Serena. I’m gonna relish these next few weeks.”

Serena Williams is one of the most celebrated and accomplished athletes of all time. She will play in the U.S. Open later this month and then retire.

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Williams's second-round match on Wednesday at the National Bank Open could be her last in Canada, and everyone wants in on it, even the prime minister and ...

She added that she felt “grateful to have gotten the chance to play her and connect with her in some way. “That’s, I think, the place to do it,” she said. “In Toronto, we had a nice conversation going, and at the U.S. Open she said some very kind things to me in the locker room,” Andreescu said. It was the first time Olympia had sat through a full match, and she low-fived her mother — a go-to move when you’re 4 — after her win. Her opponent, Andreescu, approached the sideline and asked the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion if she could give her a hug. She is plainly having fun in Toronto. Over the weekend before the tournament began, she and her husband, Alexis Ohanian, and their daughter, Olympia, went to Medieval Times, the theater show with crowns and swords. “All of the signs were definitely pointing to a U.S. Open retirement. (Canada was founded in 1867, and the women’s tournament started in 1892.) We’d like to thank you for reading The Times and encourage you to support journalism like this by becoming a subscriber. Doing so will give you access to the work of over 1,700 journalists whose mission is to cover the world and make sure you have accurate and impartial information on the most important topics of the day. Ahead of Serena Williams’s taking the court — which she did with a bowed head and a serious expression — a video with greetings from the retired champion Billie Jean King and some rising stars on the tour, Coco Gauff, Leylah Fernandez and Bianca Andreescu, played for the crowd. “In the players’ lounge, you heard the chatter.

Serena Williams serves in her womenssingles semifinal match against Naomi Osaka. The tension between accident and agency, acceptance and control, is among the ...

(After the Supreme Court’s recent decision, of course, it is less of a choice for many people in this country.) Williams has always seemed to know what she wants; it has always been her great gift, and her gift to us, to pursue it without regard for anything else. It is not fair, but it is life, and it is a choice—or should be—for those who want it. It feels off, and not just because only Serena Williams can be Serena Williams. Much of the essay is about Williams’s “evolution,” as she puts it, from professional tennis player to dedicated mother, and also to venture capitalist. For all the girl-bossing, though, the essay reads most powerfully as an acknowledgment of the things she can’t do, and of the pain that comes with that—even as new opportunities do, too. It is not the only one that Williams acknowledges in the essay. Williams has said that she did not plan to conceive a child just before the 2017 Australian Open—which she would win, defeating her sister, while about eight weeks pregnant—but that the birth of her daughter, later that year, was a great blessing. It’s no secret that Williams’s parents, and particularly her father, had a vision for how to shape Venus and Serena. Even the most talented athletes confront long odds, but the Williams sisters also confronted the tremendous headwinds of racism and misogyny and poverty, and in the cosseted world of tennis, no less. And so can you.” It can be fraught for commentators to address the role of anger in Williams’s play, given the existence of ugly stereotypes about angry Black women. It takes a lot of training to achieve that kind of consistency, no matter the situation, no matter the choice of serve. When I heard that Serena Williams had announced, in an essay for Vogue, her impending retirement, I forgot, for a moment, the long list of her accomplishments. I didn’t think about her records, her unmatched aura of dominance, her transformation from athlete into cultural force—into someone who demanded, by simply being who she was, that people change the way they talk about female athletes, and Black female athletes in particular. But I’ve been thinking about all those tosses that she must have practiced as a kid, lofting the ball over and over to hit the same mark.

Williams's career is coming to an end before it would if she were a male player, simply because she must choose between tennis and having more children.

For the men in her line of work, parenthood is usually framed as an opportunity for some kind of spiritual change. Djokovic, 35, won five of his grand slam titles after his son was born in 2014, and three of them after his daughter in 2017. Williams, on the other hand, won the Australian Open in 2017 while she was two months pregnant, which, as she writes, seems “almost impossible”. The biggest impact having four children had on his body is that he needed surgery in 2016 because he twisted his knee while he was running a bath for them. But she can’t because she has to choose between having more children and having a playing career. She’s won more singles titles than any of them, more Olympic medals too, and did it all, as they used to say about Ginger Rogers, “backwards and in high heels”.

Throughout her career, Serena Williams has been untouchable and unattainable. As she picked up a piece of sports equipment — in her hands, a tennis racket ...

She demanded to be heard and seen, expecting the privileges that should have been afforded a person of her standing, until she had to acquiesce and play on. Though some would write it off as Serena having a “ meltdown,” a belittling word, in that moment she was fully herself: the tennis great and the new mom. Though no man in her stratosphere would face this same choice, to define this as the end of Serena’s ambition would be incorrect. She interpreted that as an assault against her character, and Olympia’s mother would have none of that. Even as she made points worthy of a mic drop — being penalized a game for calling the umpire a “thief” when men have hurled far worst insults for lesser punishment — she still could have handled it better. “I have never cheated in my life,” she said, her voice breaking. She would grunt, swear and scream while winning her championships, but during the 2018 U.S. Open final there was a greater purpose behind her intensity. Yet despite the tidy narrative that someone who looks like me should view her as a role model, I have rarely seen myself in Serena Williams. She recognizes the inequity that exists in this question. She possesses more wealth than many of us will see in our lifetime — as does little Olympia. How many 4-year-olds have naptime but also co-own a sports franchise? No other athlete has performed in a body like hers, a work of art as much shaped inside weight rooms as it was celestially blessed by the Creator who appreciates the functionality and beauty of thick thighs and full hips. I personally have celebrated her, cheering through all of her iterations that began as the girl from Compton with beaded braids.

“We relate to her triumphs and defeats . . . and what she has accomplished transcends the sport we love and will impact Black and brown girls and women ...

She wrote in Vogue that focusing on being a parent was one of her motivations in leaving the sport. In 2003, she dealt with trauma after her half-sister, Yetunde Price, was the victim of a drive-by shooting in Compton. She drew criticism for her form-fitting outfits, especially at the 2018 French Open. And she had life-threatening complications during the birth of her daughter, Olympia, that required four surgeries. At the time she started, she and Venus were adolescents and young women when they first bore the brunt of the force of the tennis world against them,” the author said. Serena earned more than $94 million in prize money, more than any other women’s player in the game’s history. Off the court, she carried herself with aplomb, often reflective in her responses to probing questions, and at times, exposing her raw emotions. In 2000, she pulled out of the Family Circle Cup in South Carolina in support of the NAACP’s call for a boycott over the Confederate flag flying above the statehouse. She stood in her Black beauty. “Serena is our role model for tennis excellence and beyond,” she said. She and her older sister, Venus Williams, another tennis great, burst onto the tennis courts and into Black America’s heart in the mid-1990s, with their no-nonsense father and coach Richard Williams, who directed, cajoled and motivated them. Serena played with the grit of her upbringing. She spent 319 weeks as the No. 1 player in the world and returned to the top spot after nearly 15 years — a record. Their father told the world to watch out for Serena after Venus had established herself as the best player in the world.

The first stop on Serena Williams's farewell tour came to a quick end as she fell 6-2, 6-4 to Belinda Bencic in the second round of the Canadian Open.

I wish I could’ve played better but Belinda played so well today.” I’ll be coming back just as a visitor to the city but otherwise it’s been remarkable.” “It’s been a pretty interesting 24 hours ... I’m terrible at goodbyes.

For someone who doesn't pride herself on goodbyes, Serena Williams exceeded expectations on Wednesday in Toronto. The American tennis icon proved herself a ...

It could be a different story in Cincinnati or later this summer at the US Open, where she will likely play her final Grand Slam match with an adoring public ready to fill Arthur Ashe stadium with resounding echoes of her sonorous name. I never imagined to play Serena so many times and it’s always an honor to be on the court with her, and that’s why I think tonight is about her, especially here in Toronto.” She seemed to teeter on the precipice of an all-out cry, but didn’t allow herself the luxury of doing so.

One day after announcing her intentions to retire from tennis, Serena Williams was defeated by Belinda Bencic in the second round of the National Bank Open ...

Williams managed to hold serve on the next point, but Bencic did the same to take match point. Williams took the first point in the first set but quickly lost momentum as Bencic won the next three points. Maybe the best word to describe what I'm up to is evolution. But Bencic rattled off three straight points to take the advantage. "I have never liked the word retirement," Williams stated. Bencic won in straight sets 6-2, 6-4.