Serena Williams

Tennis player

• Born: September 26, 1981
• Birthplace: Saginaw, Michigan

Tennis player

Serena Williams reached the top of the professional tennis world in singles and doubles with her sister Venus. She also branched out into fashion design and entertainment. As Black Americans excelling at a sport historically dominated by upper-class White players, the Williams sisters attracted much attention throughout their careers.

Areas of achievement: Fashion; Sports: golf and tennis; Sports: Olympics

Early Life

Serena Jameka Ross Evelyn Williams was born in Saginaw, Michigan, the youngest of five daughters of Richard, part-owner of a security business, and Oracene Price Williams, a nurse. The family soon moved to Compton, California, a poor and crime-ridden suburb of Los Angeles. Richard coached Williams and her sister Venus on the local public tennis courts and entered Williams in her first tournament when she was four years old. Over the next five years, Williams gained national attention for her performance in the junior tournament circuit.

By 1991, Williams had become the highest-ranked ten-year-old tennis player in Southern California. Her father removed his daughters from the circuit and enrolled them in Rick Macci’s tennis academy in Florida. This move was controversial at the time, as the tournament circuit was considered to be the best venue for success in the sport. The girls were homeschooled while they attended Macci’s academy. In 1995, Richard returned to coaching his two daughters in tennis and also published newsletters on their progress. In October 1995, at the Bell Challenge in Vanier, Quebec, fourteen-year-old Williams debuted as a professional tennis player. Over the next couple of years, she was overshadowed by her sister’s abilities, but in 1997, she went from being ranked number 453 to number 99. She placed well at the Ameritech Cup tournament later that year.

Life’s Work

Williams participated in the Australian Open, her first Grand Slam tournament, in January 1998. She lost to her sister Venus in the second round. Six months later, Williams paired with Max Mirnyi of Belarus and won the mixed-double tournament at Wimbledon. Her ranking soon jumped to number 21 and garnered her a twelve-million-dollar contract with Puma. Williams won her first Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) championship at the Open Gaz de France in 1999 and her second one at the US Open later that year. She and her sister also won the doubles championship at the US Open. After several injuries and illnesses forced her out of competitions in 1999 and 2000, Williams had a string of wins. She was bested by her sister in March at the Lipton Championships in Florida but still earned a top-ten ranking. The duo won the doubles title at Wimbledon in 2000; Williams won in singles at the Faber Grand Prix; and then the sisters earned a gold medal at the Summer Olympics in Sydney.

The 2001 tennis season brought mixed results for Williams. After her sister withdrew, Williams won the singles title at Indian Wells, California. She lost in the Australian Open, but the sisters won the doubles championship. Williams then was bested at the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open. In 2002, a sprained ankle forced Williams to withdraw from the Australian Open. Later that year, Williams earned the number-one ranking in women’s tennis. She won the singles title at Wimbledon in 2003, but a knee injury at the US Open forced Williams to skip the rest of the year’s major tournaments. That year, she signed a forty-million-dollar contract with Nike that included her own signature clothing line, Aneres.

When she returned to the WTA circuit, Williams won the 2004 NASDAQ-100 Open, the 2005 China Open, and the 2006 Australian Open. After a six-month hiatus, Williams won the singles titles at the 2007 Australian Open, the 2007 Sony Ericsson Open, the 2008 Hopman Cup, and the 2008 US Open. She and her sister also won the doubles title at Wimbledon and a second Olympic gold medal at the Beijing Olympics. In 2009, Williams overpowered Venus for the singles title at Wimbledon and accompanied her in the doubles title. At the US Open in 2009, Williams’s angry outburst against a line judge resulted in a fine and two years’ probation. Despite this incident, Williams and her sister won the tournament’s doubles crown. In November, Williams won the Sony Ericcson Championship. In December 2009, Williams was named Associate Press Female Athlete of the Year, and the International Tennis Federation named her a world champion in singles and doubles. She continued her dominance of women’s tennis in 2010, winning Wimbledon and the Australian Open.

Williams’s other interests include fashion designing and entertainment. She attended the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale and designed her own clothing line. In 2005, she debuted in a television series, Venus and Serena: For Real; she also made guest appearances on many talk shows and television programs. Williams became part-owner of the Miami Dolphins football team in 2009.

In 2011 Williams experienced a number of health setbacks. She had a blood clot in her lung and underwent a series of surgeries and was required to take a several-month break from tennis. She returned for the US Open in September but did not walk away with the title. At the 2012 French Open, Williams lost in the first round of play for the first time in her career. She bounced back to win the singles title at Wimbledon that year and won two gold medals at the Summer Olympics in London in singles and in doubles with her sister, bringing her medal total to four. She won another Grand Slam title at the US Open that fall.

In 2013 Williams won the singles title at the French Open and the US Open. She took the US Open title again in 2014, and the French Open and Wimbledon singles titles in 2015. After a disappointing start to the 2016 season in which she lost a number of Grand Slam titles, including one to newcomer Angelique Kerber at the Australian Open, Williams won the singles title at Wimbledon, defeating Kerber in straight sets for the victory. She and her sister then secured the doubles title as well. However, the two faced a disappointing loss in the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Williams missed much of the rest of the season due to a shoulder injury. In January 2017, Williams defeated her sister to secure the Australian Open title for a record-setting seventh time. After withdrawing from her next two competitions, she announced in April that she was pregnant and would be missing the rest of the season. By the time of her exit from the 2017 season, Serena Williams had thirty-nine Grand Slam titles to her name, twenty-three of them singles titles. This surpassed the previous record of twenty-two singles titles set by German tennis player Steffi Graf.

Williams experienced complications in childbirth, underwent multiple surgeries, and endured an arduous months' long recovery. After her return to play, she went on to reach the singles finals at Wimbledon and the US Open in both 2018 and 2019, the quarterfinals at the 2019 Australian Open, and the semifinals at the 2020 US Open. In 2020 she won her seventy-third career singles title at the Auckland tournament, where she also reached the finals in doubles competition. That season marked her twentieth top-twenty finish. She opted not to compete at the 2020 Olympic Games, held in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and injury forced her withdrawal from the 2021 Wimbledon tournament.

While much hype surrounded Williams's return to play and pursuit of a twenty-fourth Grand Slam title in 2022, interest only increased further in early August of that year, when the legend announced that she would finally be retiring from the professional sport. As she had suffered defeat in the first round of Wimbledon in June, the weeks leading up to that year's US Open tournament proved especially intense given the spread of rumors that this competition could likely be her last in the Grand Slam series. The first round ultimately saw her secure a win over Montenegro's Danka Kovinić, and she gained a win in the second round against Anett Kontaveit. However, her final tournament came to an end when Williams was beat in the third round by Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia. In an emotional scene, Williams received a standing ovation in Arthur Ashe Stadium as she tearfully waved goodbye and exited the court. Her plans in retirement included focusing on her venture capital firm, Serena Ventures, which prioritizes investing in companies helmed by women and people of color.

Significance

Williams rose from humble beginnings to become top-ranked in the WTA. While at times she was overshadowed by her sister, Williams became a champion through talent and determination. She also used her success to promote outreach to inner-city youths. She supported middle school and high school mentoring programs and helped found the Venus and Serena Williams Tutorial/Tennis Academy and the Serena Williams Secondary School in Matooni, Kenya. In addition to her philanthropic ventures, Williams has spoken out about racism and sexism in tennis, such as unfair drug testing and the lost-seed policy following maternity leave.

Bibliography

"Australian Open 2017: Serena Williams Beats Venus Williams to Set Grand Slam Record." BBC Sport, 28 Jan. 2017, www.bbc.com/sport/tennis/38781553. Accessed 8 May 2017.

Branch, John. "Seven Days That Closed Out a Career." The New York Times, 6 Sept. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/09/04/sports/tennis/serena-williams-last-us-open.html. Accessed 20 Oct. 2022.

Gregory, Sean. “Serena Williams Opens up about Her Complicated Comeback, Motherhood and Making Time to Be Selfish.” Time, 16 Aug. 2018, time.com/5368858/serena-williams-comeback/. Accessed 21 July 2021. ‌

Rodgers, R. Pierre, and Ellen B. Brogin Rodgers. "'Ghetto Cinderellas': Venus and Serena Williams and the Discourse of Racism." Out of the Shadows: A Biographical History of African American Athletes. U of Arkansas P, 2006.

“Serena Williams.” WTA Tour, Women’s Tennis Association, 2022, www.wtatennis.com/players/230234/serena-williams. Accessed 31 Aug. 2022.‌

Williams, Serena. "Serena Williams Says Farewell to Tennis on Her Own Terms—and in Her Own Words." Vogue, 9 Aug. 2022, www.vogue.com/article/serena-williams-retirement-in-her-own-words. Accessed 31 Aug. 2022.

Williams, Serena, and Daniel Paisner. On the Line. Grand Central Publishing, 2009.

Williams, Serena, and Daniel Paisner. My Life: Queen of the Court. Simon, 2009.

Williams, Venus, et al. Venus and Serena: Serving from the Hip—Ten Rules for Living, Loving, and Winning. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005.