Serena Williams, a tennis legend, announced her retirement!
In a Tuesday Vogue story, tennis legend Serena Williams announced her retirement.
Williams stated, "I have never liked the word retiring. "Evolution may be the best term to use to describe what I'm doing. I'm here to let you know that my priorities are shifting away from tennis and toward other things.
Williams, who turns 41 next month, has won over $94 million in career prize money along with 73 singles wins and 23 doubles trophies.
Williams is regarded as one of the all-time great athletes. She acknowledged in her Vogue article that some critics have pointed out that she hasn't amassed the most grand slam championships in women's tennis history.
Some claim that I'm not the greatest player ever since I haven't surpassed Margaret Court's total of 24 grand slam victories, which she attained prior to the start of the "open era" in 1968. If I claimed I didn't want that record, I'd be lying.
After the U.S. Open, which will take place in late August or early September, she declared she will retire. She would tie Court's grand slam record if she won there.
"I'm unsure if I'll be prepared to win New York. But I'm going to try," Williams stated in reference to the Queens-based competition.
She has kept track of sponsorships received from brands including Nike, Audemars Piguet, Away, Beats, Bumble, Gatorade, Gucci, Lincoln, Michelob, Nintendo, Wilson Sporting Goods, and Procter & Gamble.
"I never wanted to have to decide between having a family and playing tennis. It's not fair, in my opinion," Williams wrote. If I were a man, my wife would be performing the actual labor of raising our family while I was out there competing and succeeding, so I wouldn't be writing this.
In the announcement, Williams put a strong emphasis on her family, stating that her daughter wishes to be an older sister. Alexis Ohanian, the creator of Reddit, is her husband.
I have to prioritize being a mother, achieving my spiritual objectives, and finding a new, interesting Serena. I'm going to enjoy these upcoming weeks, Williams stated in a post on Instagram on Tuesday.
In her professional life, she seeks to grow Serena Ventures, a six-person investment company that was one of the first to invest in MasterClass. This year, her company secured $111 million in outside funding.
Only 2% of VC funding, according to Williams, goes to women; she wants to alter that.
She stated, "More individuals who look like me need to be in that position, donating money back to themselves, in order for us to alter that.
Serena Willians.. a brilliant career
Serena Williams's tale is made even more extraordinary by the fact that she has succeeded despite having substantial health issues, difficulties with fitness and drive, and, most crucially, taking a year off to have her first kid.
Although the tale has been repeated several times, it may still not be well known. The story of the determined parent who sees the economic potential in a tennis career for their child is well-known in tennis, but Richard Williams has done it well.
And it's a testament to all three of them that, despite all that has happened over the previous 20 years, they are still close.
Venus and Serena are separated by only 15 months, and Serena's life and career are centered around her relationship with her sister.
She enjoyed playing the role of the family's privileged little princess and did everything Venus did, including picking up a tennis racquet and picking up the game on Compton, California's glass-encrusted courts.
The dynamic has been evident throughout their professional careers, with Serena quickly catching up to Venus after the older sister first took the lead. Serena's ambition to get her way has made her a fierce and, at times, contentious rival.
Venus was the poised, composed player on the court, while Serena motioned, yelled, and screamed her way to victory, defeating rivals when her tennis didn't go as planned.
Serena was the first of the two to win a grand slam singles championship, doing so at the US Open in 1999, a few weeks before turning 18.
The sisters generated a lot of enthusiasm, but tennis became less hospitable as they became the dominating powers in the women's game.
In addition to having contrasting looks, Venus and Serena's brand of athletic power tennis changed the game and made their competitors attempt to catch up.
The most humiliating incident occurred in Indian Wells in 2001 when spectators jeered Serena after believing there had been foul play in Venus' withdrawal prior to a semifinal match with her sister. "Home" support was far from assured in America. Venus and Richard said that they experienced racist taunts from spectators.
The sisters boycotted the tournament for almost ten years, and rumors that the results of their bouts were predetermined continued for many years.
Although Serena's performance in the 2018 US Open final will not go down in history, it was clear from the look in the stadium that she has had a significant impact on tennis.
This was not a representation of tennis as a middle-class, white sport. Umpire Carlos Ramos had to be led off the field before the awards ceremony because the varied audience, which had gathered to worship at the shrine of their queen, was so furious in response to his choice to call three code infractions.
Williams lost the Naomi Osaka match in one of four slam finals she lost as a mother while attempting—and eventually failing—to match Margaret Court's record of 24 slam singles victories.
However, Serena's record is often seen as being more spectacular because 11 of Court's victories were in Australia, where the sport has always had far lower standards.
Serena had to wait nearly three years after winning her maiden championship before winning another, but two soon became into five as she won all four grand slam tournaments between the French Open in 2002 and the Australian Open in 2003, earning the moniker "Serena slam."
Her most successful venues would turn out to be Melbourne Park and Wimbledon, where she would win seven championships apiece, followed by six at Flushing Meadows and three at Roland Garros.
In 2014 and 2015, she finished the Serena slam for a second time. However, in 2015, a shocking defeat to Roberta Vinci in the US Open semifinals prevented her from completing the calendar Grand Slam.
Williams turned to French coach Patrick Mouratoglou after turning 30 and suffering her first slam loss in the first round at the French Open in 2012. She then entered the most dominant phase of her career, winning 10 slams in the four and a half years before the birth of her daughter Olympia in 2017.
Williams' success had been punctuated by extended absences throughout the preceding ten years, which had been considerably more up and down. Her ranking fell to 139 in 2006 as a result of a combination of injuries, sadness, and a lack of drive.
The next year, she won the Australian Open, but at the time, she was unfit, ranked 81st, and supposedly on the point of being dismissed by Nike. She was motivated by her detractors and fell short of Maria Sharapova in the final by only three games.
Her life-threatening pulmonary embolisms and a severe foot cut cut short her celebrations after winning Wimbledon in 2010, forcing her to miss nearly a year of competition.
After a difficult birth, the pulmonary embolisms reappeared, making what she accomplished on the court afterward all the more remarkable considering the potentially fatal conditions that left her bedridden.
Serena has always explored interests outside of tennis, including fashion, humanitarian work in Africa, and more lately, her investment firm Serena Ventures, which has grown in significance.
While Serena has discovered a greater political voice on black and gender issues and, with the birth of Olympia, as a mother, she and Venus launched the Yetunde Price Resource Center in honor of their slain half-sister to assist families afflicted by violence in Compton.
A month shy of turning 41, Serena has decided it's time to say goodbye to a sport that will always remember her as one of the greatest because she wants to have a second kid.
