Serena Williams, the 23-time Grand Slam champion who has been the face of tennis since winning her first US Open in 1999, said in a magazine article published online Tuesday that she planned to retire from the sport after playing in the tournament again. which starts at the end of this month.
Williams, who long ago transcended her sport as a dominant cultural figure, said in a cover story for Vogue that she has “never liked the word retirement” and preferred the word “evolution” to describe her next steps . “I’m evolving away from tennis, into other things that are important to me,” including working with his venture capital firm and raising his family.
He wasn’t specific about when he might stop playing, but hinted on Instagram that the US Open could be his last tournament. “The countdown has begun,” he said, adding: “I’m going to be rocking these next few weeks.”
Walking off the stage this year at the US Open would be a fitting end to Williams’ storied career. He won his first Grand Slam title there, in 1999, when he was just 17 years old, or 23 years ago, a number that matches his Grand Slam career.
“It feels like the right exclamation point, the right ending,” said Pam Shriver, the former tennis player and commentator who was one of the great doubles champions of the 1980s. “It doesn’t matter his result, and it’s a conclusion that feels much better than last year at Wimbledon.”
At Wimbledon in 2021, Williams was forced to withdraw from her first-round match after a few minutes when she slipped and ruptured her hamstring.
The injury sidelined her for almost a year. In fact, Shriver and others thought it likely that Williams would never officially retire, but instead drift into the existence she assumed for nearly a year after her Wimbledon exit.
This spring, however, Williams said he was eager to get back to playing competitively. In the Vogue story, she stated that Tiger Woods convinced her to commit to training hard for two weeks and see what happened. She didn’t immediately follow his advice, but eventually started hitting and signed up to compete in doubles at a Wimbledon tune-up event.
At Wimbledon, she played a spirited but inconsistent three-hour first-round match, but lost to France’s Harmoniy Tan, 7-5, 1-6, 7-6 (7), during which she showed flashes of power and touch this had made him almost unbeatable.
Williams said she and her husband, Alexis Ohanian, planned to have another child.
“Alexis and I have been trying for another child for the past year, and we recently got word from my doctor that reassured me and made me feel that whenever we’re ready, we can add to the family. our family. I definitely don’t want to get pregnant again as an athlete. I need to be two feet in tennis or two feet outside.”
Williams, whose last Grand Slam tournament victory came while pregnant during the 2017 Australian Open, was knocked out of Wimbledon in June in the first round.
“Unfortunately, I wasn’t ready to win Wimbledon this year,” Williams said. “And I don’t know if I’ll be ready to win New York. But I’ll try. And the pre-tournaments will be fun.”
Williams has won nearly $100 million in prize money.
Williams is currently second only to Australia’s Margaret Court in Grand Slam singles championships, a record she had multiple chances of equaling and surpassing in 2018 and 2019 when she lost four Grand Slam finals without winning a set . However, few in tennis believe that this shortcoming should tarnish Williams’ legacy as the greatest women’s tennis player and one of the greatest athletes in any sport.
Correction:
August 9, 2022
An earlier version of this article misstated Serena Williams’ age when she first won the US Open in 1999. She was 17, not 18.