Serena Williams

Serena Williams says she's "evolving away from tennis" and planned to retire from the sport she dominated with 23 Grand Slam titles following the U.S. Open.

"But I'm turning 41 (in September), and something's got to give." "Unfortunately I wasn't ready to win Wimbledon this year. I want to grow that family." "I'm terrible at goodbyes, the world's worst. "The countdown has begun. "Maybe the best word to describe what I'm up to is evolution.

"I don't want it to be over, but at the same time I'm ready for what's next," the 23-time Grand Slam champion said.

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. "I'm not looking for some ceremonial, final on-court moment," Williams wrote. "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." She was off the tour for about a year after getting injured during her first-round match at Wimbledon in 2021. 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 US Open final she lost to Naomi Osaka, a woman more than a decade younger who grew up idolising 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 keep saying to myself, I wish it could be easy for me, but it's not. "There comes a time in life when we have to decide to move in a different direction.

The 40-year-old broke the news in a self-penned article in Vogue magazine and admitted that she "hates" the decision. "I have never liked the word 'retirement'.

"And I don't know if I will be ready to win New York. But I'm going to try. I need to be two feet into tennis or two feet out." And I'm going to miss you." I'm torn: I don't want it to be over, but at the same time I'm ready for what's next." "I definitely don't want to be pregnant again as an athlete. "Maybe the best word to describe what I'm up to is evolution.

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.

Billie Jean King has described Serena Williams as tennis's 'greatest player' following the 23-time grand slam singles champion's announcement that she will ...

Paying her own tribute to Williams, Emma Raducanu, the US Open champion, said: “She definitely changed the game. Pam Shriver, the former world No 3, added: “She [Williams] has impacted tennis on the court and off the court. Speaking to USA Today, the former men’s world No 1, John McEnroe, said of Williams: “She should do whatever she wants.

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.

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.

The intense Sharapova rivalry that fired 'angry' Serena to the top of tennis.

“The book was a lot about me. You know, I was, like, ‘Oh, OK.’ I didn’t expect to be reading a book about me, that wasn’t necessarily true,” Williams said. “Especially having a daughter, I feel like negativity is taught. A teenage Sharapova stunned Williams in the 2004 Wimbledon final to win her first grand slam, lighting the fire for the pair’s fierce rivalry. “It’s a Wimbledon final, you know. I think Serena hated me for being the skinny kid who beat her, against all odds, at Wimbledon.” The Russian too was driven by a cold-blooded thirst for silverware, admitting she didn’t have many friends on tour because she viewed all players as competitors to be beaten. I got out as quickly as I could, but she knew I was there. Their last meeting — a 6-1 6-1 demolition job at the 2019 US Open — sealed Williams’ remarkable 20-2 head-to-head record over Sharapova. I think it’s normal. People often wonder why I have had so much trouble beating Serena; she’s owned me in the past 10 years. “There were so many matches I won because something made me angry or someone counted me out.

American great Serena Williams says she is "evolving away from tennis" and plans to retire from the sport she dominated with 23 Grand Slam titles following ...

"Unfortunately I wasn't ready to win Wimbledon this year. "I'm terrible at goodbyes, the world's worst. I want to grow that family." "The countdown has begun. "Maybe the best word to describe what I'm up to is evolution. "A few years ago I quietly started Serena Ventures, a venture capital firm.

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.

Twenty-four is the number of times the Australian tennis player Margaret Court won a Grand Slam singles title before retiring, in 1977. But any comparison falls ...

It looked squarely in the face at the deadening repetition inherent to training, the exhaustion in the travel, the physical loneliness of life on tour. She may not be able to dually serve the gods of tennis and motherhood, but generations of young athletes will continue to pick up racquets of their own because she inspired them to do so. He came back in 1995, retired for the second time in 1999, then came back again in 2001 before finally retiring for good in 2003. Next, an exquisite, bodysuited lunge in 2003, taken shortly after her historic “Serena Slam” (four Grand Slams in a row, but not within a calendar year). And finally there she is, resplendent in red in 2015, the year she won her 19th Grand Slam at the Australian Open, her 20th at the French Open, and her 21st at Wimbledon. Twenty-two came one year later, also at Wimbledon. And then there was the illustrious 23, at the 2017 Australian Open, when she was 35 years old and two months pregnant with her daughter, Olympia. Five years later, it is Olympia who matters most. The reality is that Williams wants another baby; her daughter wants a sibling. He was back in the pool by 2014, then retired “for real” in 2016 after Rio, and five more golds. But any comparison falls comically short: Court won the majority of her slams before the Open Era of tennis (in which pros and amateurs compete against one another) began, in 1968. The woman who has broken every barrier and defied the boundaries of the game has at last collided with the same fate of countless women before her: She simply can’t have it all. There she is with Venus Williams, her sister, in matching striped gowns on a sofa in 1998, one year before Serena won her first Grand Slam, at the U.S. Open, at 17 years old. It was, as The New York Times noted, “one of the most passionately anti-sports books ever written by a superstar athlete.” There were no platitudes on hard work or a champion’s mentality, no dithering over the necessary sacrifices or the payoffs to come. Unless Serena Williams pulls off the kind of feat typically reserved for Hollywood endings at this year’s U.S. Open, 23 is the number of Grand Slam singles titles with which she will retire. These beings, light-years of talent and discipline and stamina beyond us mortals who admire them, are, technically, leaving the day jobs that made them rich and famous.

The greatest female tennis player will call it a career. Here's how athletes from around the globe are responding to Serena Williams' retirement.

We’ve all watched you wear the crown of greatness with the kind of humility, grace, and integrity that all of us can aspire to. “Can't wait to see what the next chapter holds for you... “I think in the year off, she realized she wasn't in it long-term... Andy Roddick, a legend on the men’s tennis tour, told Tennis Channel, "It's weird when... you know it's not going to go on forever but you're still shocked by the news... While some responded right away, most had to take their time to react to the tennis legend’s bombshell announcement.

…but we made our best attempt to choose a few anyway. 1999: Winning her first career Grand Slam at the U.S. Open. Fun fact: The full U.S. Open final between 17- ...

Serena Williams has changed the game of tennis. Williams is just the second women’s player in history after Graf to achieve the feat in singles. Make no mistake, the greatest player to ever play the game of tennis has mixed emotions about retiring from the sport. In a sports world that has often been dominated by men, Serena Williams has broken the mold. She completed her first “Serena Slam” at the 2003 Australian Open, where she beat Venus once again in the final. While she would win doubles in those same Olympics with sister Venus, the singles medal secured her the career singles Golden Slam – all four major titles plus an Olympic gold medal. No player has joined the list since Williams finished her Golden Slam in 2012. (Hingis was the first Swiss player, man or woman, to win a major title and reach No. 1 in the world – a spot she held for 209 weeks). Serena didn’t drop a set all tournament, bringing her total of Grand Slam singles titles to 23. They can play with aggression and pump their fists. They can wear what they want and say what they want and kick butt and be proud of it all.” While the idea that Williams would win majors wasn’t shocking, many didn’t think it would happen so soon.

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”.

Serena Williams said it plainly: It isn't really fair. A male athlete would never have to make the same choice. But after a trailblazing career that both ...

It's the hard reality of the world." "It's the reality of the world we live in. "As far as Serena, I think this is the right time," Evert said. "The one emotion that I can boil it down to, really, is just gratitude." And being a parent is the opposite of that." "The motherhood/tennis career subject is not one I experienced," she said in an email message. "I think at some point, you gotta make that choice," she said. "Having it all is a subjective thing," she said. "Believe me," the 23-time Grand Slam champion also wrote, "I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family. If I were a guy I wouldn't be writing this because I'd be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labour of expanding our family." "Now, looking back, I wish that every time I chose my family over my job ... it didn't label me as unambitious," she said. And to the idea that, no, you really can't have it all — at least, not all at the same time.

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.

No one knows exactly how many more matches Williams will play before walking away, and the 23-time Grand Slam champion exited the National Bank Open on ...

Delivered another later in that opening game, too, showing off the superb serve that helped her to so many victories. But because of a leg injury that sidelined her for the last half of 2021 and first half of 2022, she was playing for only the third time in the past 12 months, and it showed. "Belinda played so well today."

Serena Williams has lost her first match since telling the world she is ready to leave professional tennis.

Williams will exit the court one last time at the U.S. Open in New York next month. Williams held serve and seemed to have a jump in her set. Her longevity and ability to stay great throughout it all is unparalleled. "She's used tennis as a platform way beyond just the sport. Williams wiping away tears as she leaves the court. Throughout the evening the crowd tried to motivate Williams by yelling and clapping. Her last win in Canada came in 2013. A number of occasions the head umpire asked the fans to be quiet. Williams cried, wiping her face with a towel as she waved to the crowd. She made no mistake and ended it in short order. As Williams says goodbye to Canada.

What a scene here. She cruised to a first set victory, 6-2, in just 41 minutes.

The first stop on Serena Williams farewell tour came to a quick end as she fell to Belinda Bencic in second-round action at the National Bank Open on ...

Available to download now on - iPhone & iPad and Android "As I said in the article, I'm terrible at goodbyes. "Thank you," she said with a grin as the presentation ended with a gift to her from the Toronto Maple Leafs NHL and the Toronto Raptors NBA franchises. I wish I could have played better but Belinda played so well today. "As I said in the article, I'm terrible at goodbyes. "I love playing here, I've always loved playing here.