Serena Williams

Serena Williams has bid an emotional good-bye to the US Open with a third-round loss, in what may have been the last singles match of her glittering career.

Serena Williams lost what is expected to be the last match of her transcendent tennis career on Saturday, eliminated from the US Open in the third round by ...

Serena Williams lost what is expected to be the last match of her transcendent tennis career, eliminated from the US Open in the third round by Ajla Tomlja.

Forty-year-old winner of 23 Grand Slams bows out to Australia's Ajla Tomljanović in three sets.

Serena Williams, the most dominant women's tennis player of the Open Era, bid farewell to the sport on an emotional Friday night at the 2022 US Open, ...

According to StubHub, US Open ticket sales have increased by more than 20% since her win over Kontaveit on Aug. 31. Tickets on the website for her Friday night ...

But that was Court One at Wimbledon against a novice and this was a sold-out Arthur Ashe Stadium against the player she had grown up admiring. From the ...

Williams suffered a third-round loss to Ajla Tomljanovic at the US Open; 40-year-old is expected to retire from competitive tennis, having won 23 Grand Slam ...

Born in the same year as the tennis champion, I watched her face countless obstacles – and become the greatest of all time, says writer and broadcaster Afua ...

The 23-time Grand Slam winner fell in the third round Friday night in what will likely be the final match of her illustrious career.

Following is reaction to Serena Williams' defeat by Australia's Ajla Tomljanovic at the U.S. Open on Friday, likely to be the last match of the 23-times ...

The 23-time Grand Slam champion staved off five match points to prolong the three-hours-plus proceedings, but could not do more, and was eliminated from the ...

The 23-time grand slam champion tearfully thanked her parents in what is expected to be the final match of her career.

The 23-time major singles champion was eliminated from the tournament she has won six times with a 7-5, 6-7 (4), 6-1 defeat to Ajla Tomljanović on Friday night ...

Williams, like she did throughout her entire career, gave it her all in her final US Open match.

Serena Williams, considered by many to be the greatest women's tennis player ever, is also the GOAT on Twitter among female athletes.

Open. Open tournament, Twitter launched an exclusive GOAT emoji -- with a tennis skirt and racket -- to honor Williams’ final tournament and greatest-of-all-time-level career. On the first day of the U.S.

Pure grit and scintillating play – Williams's curtain call against Ajla Tomljanović demonstrated how she changed all sport for ever.

She had a magical run, she played brilliantly at times, she reminded everyone of the qualities that have made her a legend. It turns out, not too surprisingly, that Williams has a decent nose for an investment: she has so far funded 16 “unicorns”, companies valued at more than $1bn. “She doesn’t want anything to do with a boy,” says Williams – and Serena, the youngest of five sisters, doesn’t want to deny her that. The first to pay homage to Williams was a shell-shocked Tomljanović, who said before the match that she planned to play in earplugs to drown out the partisan support. But on Friday night, it was also clear that she felt a small pang of regret: how much deeper could she have gone if she’d started practising a little earlier? “Surreal” was a spot-on description for the evening, which started for a UK audience at midnight and culminated after 3am. Williams won her first grand-slam title, aged 17, in a different century: the US Open in 1999. She thanked her dad Richard, and her mum Oracene, who was the only person in the stadium not losing their mind, and may even have been having a nap at times. Current players, from Naomi Osaka to Coco Gauff to Emma Raducanu, spoke powerfully about how she paved the way for them, and She prefers to say that she is in “transition”, although she’s well aware that’s a sensitive concept in 2022, so generally when she’s asked about what’s next for her, Williams settles on “evolution”. Williams often jokes that she is the “world’s worst” at goodbyes, but on court, after the match, she did a pretty terrific job. [Williams lost an exhilarating, excruciating third-round match](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/sep/02/serena-williams-ajla-tomljanovi-us-open-tennis-third-round-retirement) at the US Open to Australia’s Ajla Tomljanović.

Twenty-seven years on the professional tour, 23 grand slam singles titles and a plethora of records; Serena Williams is leaving tennis as one of the ...

Williams, who lost possibly her last match on Friday night, made herself felt beyond the game as arguably no player ever has.

When it was over, Venus hugged her downcast sister at the net and said, in her ear, “I love you.” Try forgetting that. I wasn’t there in 2001, when Serena, playing her older sister Venus, anxious and unable to settle in—as she often was against Venus—made batches of unforced errors and lost her second U.S. Even before I was born, it was what I was meant to do and what I was supposed to do and what was chosen for me.” The Times sent a reporter to an obscure tournament in Canada in October, 1995, to cover her first professional match—which she lost badly, to an eighteen-year-old American named Annie Miller. In the seventh game of that set, Serena crushed a return winner to break Andreescu’s serve; then she held her own serve; then she broke Andreescu’s serve again and held once more to even the set at 5–5. There was also, a year later, Serena’s [final](https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/in-her-us-open-victory-bianca-andreescu-shows-the-swagger-that-serena-williams-brought-to-womens-tennis) against Bianca Andreescu, in which she dropped the first set, and fell behind five games to one in the second. The last ball she hit was a forehand into the net, and it was likely the last ball she will ever hit on the women’s tour—she announced, in August, that she was “evolving away from tennis,” and the understanding was that the U.S. As dominant a player as she was—the most dominant the sport has seen—her struggles were also numerous, and absorbing, and, sometimes, spectacular enough to become indelible. She would go on to lose the set, 5–7, and the match, and her last real shot at a twenty-fourth major—but not before driving those on hand to cheer for her to raucous delirium. Serena has played in the main singles draw at the U.S. To be a fan of any athlete is to know the ending and to begin processing it before it arrives. For certain stretches, such as the first games of the second set, Serena struck aces and open-stance backhands and swinging volleys as if time—and giving birth to a daughter, five years ago—had taken nothing from her game. It was Daniel Kahneman, with the American psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, who recognized that, in what and how we remember, there tends to be a cognitive bias at work.

When the 23-time major champion says she's retiring, maybe it's time to believe her – and for her to believe herself.

It was a weight only redoubled by the two strikes against her in American society: being born a woman and being born black. Then a fourth, then a fifth as the match extended past the three-hour mark. Other than winning the whole tournament, it was the perfect way to go out: 15 minutes of pure fight. When Williams won her first of 23 grand slam titles at the 1999 US Open as a 17-year-old, her road to the trophy included five opponents who one day would end up in the Hall of Fame: Kim Clijsters, Conchita Martínez, Monica Seles, Lindsay Davenport and Martina Hingis. Even as she fielded a congratulatory phone call from President Clinton afterward, it was impossible to fully reckon the extent to which her triumph would shape the perception of female athletes in the new millennium. She will continue to define success on her own terms as she has for nearly three decades in the unsparing public eye as a working-class black woman from Compton who rewrote the record books of a sport predominantly owned, played and watched by affluent white people. [only the latest example of a great champion](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/mar/14/tom-bradys-nfl-return-is-both-understandable-and-potentially-foolish) finding it hard to close the book on the glory days. [Serena Williams](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/serena-williams) Invitational over the course of five days that boasted record attendances and US television ratings – has been so fulfilling. Even in the cathartic aftermath of [Friday night’s third-round defeat](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/sep/02/serena-williams-ajla-tomljanovi-us-open-tennis-third-round-retirement) to Ajla Tomljanović, the sudden deluge of tears seemed to express a finality that she either could not or would not articulate in words. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to do that.” With a marriage to a supportive partner who shares her values, a daughter who just turned five and a venture capital firm that has raised more than $100m, there will be no crisis over her sense of purpose. But these extended farewells almost always end in a messy defeat: as a last act, Friday night’s epic in front of roaring crowd on Arthur Ashe was about as good as it gets.

Serena Williams tops most of the winning stats you could want to talk about in tennis, but even that doesn't quantify the impact of her 20-plus-year career ...

And perhaps the most prominent black athlete in the world, alongside LeBron James and Tiger Woods. Written in Anna Wintour's magazine and filled not at all with the usual platitudes about calling time and it just feeling right. Her third straight New York title turned out to be the start of another "Serena Slam", winning the Australian, French and Wimbledon (without playing a single lead-in tournament) to hold all four major titles at once for the second time in her career. A shellshocked Osaka served out the match two games later for a straight-sets win, but no-one was celebrated after the ugly scenes, with [Osaka hiding behind her visor as tears rolled down her face at the trophy presentation](/news/2018-09-09/us-open-naomi-osaka-beats-serena-williams-controversy/10218766). "Serena is unequivocally the best athlete ever. But that was nothing compared to her second missed opportunity, at the 2018 US Open. "Maybe the best word to describe what I'm up to is evolution. We marvelled at her strength and celebrated her news, but the birth later that year was not simple. well let's just give Osaka the last word. The next year she won in Paris and New York again as well as nine other WTA titles to regain her world number one ranking. [Alexis Olympia was delivered by emergency Caesarean section](/news/2017-09-14/serena-williams-shows-off-baby-alexis-in-video-diary/8943918), after which Williams went under the knife to treat another pulmonary embolism. Osaka's family had moved to the US and pursued a career in tennis for their daughter because of the Williams sisters, and here she was, just 20 years of age playing her idol in her first grand slam final.