Serena Williams looks to be preparing to retire from professional tennis for good. In a Vogue piece published on Tuesday, the great athlete, who has won innumerable trophies — including 23 Grand Slams — throughout a nearly three-decade playing career, revealed that she plans to retire after the 2019 US Open.
Williams, 40, is presently competing at the Canadian Open, where she won her first singles match in over a year earlier this week and will return to play another round on Wednesday. While continuing to compete against the world’s best athletes in competitions such as Wimbledon and last year’s French Open, Williams has also shifted her focus away from tennis in recent years.
In her latest piece, she claims that “growing away from tennis” will allow her to pursue other things.
“I’ve never liked the term “retirement.” It doesn’t strike me as a contemporary term. I’ve been thinking of this as a transition, but I want to be careful how I use that term, which has a very particular and vital meaning to a group of people “She penned a letter. “Perhaps evolution is the best term to express what I’m up to. I’m here to inform you that I’m shifting my focus away from tennis and into other activities that are important to me.”
Serena Ventures, a venture capital business she founded some years ago, is one of her top objectives, she says.
The other is her family and the hope that she and her husband, Alexis Ohanian, will have another child. Alexis Olympia, their daughter, is now four years old.
“I’d want to expand that family,” she wrote.
She began the article with a story about overhearing Olympia’s answer to an automated inquiry posed via an interactive smartphone app. Williams remembers her daughter murmuring, “I want to be a big sister,” when the robot voice asked what she wanted to be when she grew up — something she allegedly expresses “a lot” recently.
Serena Williams has been a strong figure in tennis since the mid-1990s, when she initially joined the professional arena as a teenager, with 23 Grand Slam singles victories and a record of 186 consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the world rankings list. People who follow tennis now commonly refer to her as the G.O.A.T., or the Greatest of All Time. Her and her sister Venus Williams’ simultaneous rise to fame was the subject of last year’s critically praised film “King Richard.”
Williams admitted in her article on Tuesday that she faced unique hurdles as a woman balancing family life with a top professional tennis career.
“I never wanted to have to pick between tennis and having a family. It’s not fair, in my opinion “She said. “I wouldn’t be writing this if I were a male because I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife did the actual job of growing our family. If I had the chance, maybe I’d be more like Tom Brady.”
“Don’t get me wrong: I adore being a woman, and I cherished every minute of Olympia’s pregnancy,” Williams concluded. “I was one of those irritating people who loved being pregnant and worked until the day I had to go to the hospital—even if things got a little problematic on the other side.”
Williams previously discussed the significant health issues she had following the birth of her daughter in another personal piece for Elle published last spring, in which she revealed her near-death experience. But, as she said in Vogue, Williams “nearly achieved the impossible” before that.
“A lot of people don’t understand that when I won the Australian Open in 2017, I was two months pregnant,” she wrote. “But I’m 41 this month, and something has to give.”
Although Williams acknowledged that the choice to “move on” from tennis was a pleasant one for some of her friends and other champions, such as Caroline Wozniacki and Ashleigh Barty, she highlighted that coming to grips with her own next phase had been challenging.
“I’ve been hesitant to confess to myself or anybody else that I need to stop playing tennis,” she said. “Alexis, my husband, and I have hardly discussed it; it’s almost a taboo subject. I can’t even have this discussion with my parents. It’s almost as if it’s not real until you say it out. When it comes up, I feel a knot in my throat and begin to weep.”
Williams is well aware of her history as a sports star and pioneer, as well as her chances at one last Grand Slam title.
“I’m not sure whether I’ll be ready to win in New York. But I’ll give it a go “She penned a letter.
In closing the Vogue piece, Williams said that she wants her legacy would contain a variety of accomplishments in addition to her tennis prowess.
“I hope that over time, people come to think of me as representing something more than tennis,” she wrote. “Billie Jean [King] is someone I respect because she transcended her sport. Serena is this and she is that, and she was a terrific tennis player who won those slams.”
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