She is a symbol. A character. An athlete who has far surpassed her sister’s pioneering steps and come to reign in a cloistered, mostly white sport. Serena refuses to stay there.
Announcing her plans to retire from tennis, Serena Williams said Tuesday that she was going to focus on her life outside of sports and instead prioritize being a mother, a fashion designer, a venture capitalist and much more. She will design her future as she deems best for her.
This is so Serena.
Williams has always done what he has wanted, he has always operated on his own terms. This has made her special, someone with a unique ability and who has been loved in a particular way… and sometimes has generated criticism. It has helped make her one of the greatest athletes to ever grace us with her presence: a black woman who came from the humblest beginnings in America and grew up to be a star whose magnetic pull goes beyond the boundaries of sport.
The announcement, in a Vogue magazine cover story published on Tuesday, that she was leaving tennis after participating in the US Open earlier this month was fitting for the momentous figure she has become.
It’s easy to forget that her championship journey, which included 23 Grand Slam singles titles, just shy of the record of 24 set by Margaret Court, began with a victory at the US Open in 1999. At 17, Serena she was the first black person to win a Grand Slam singles title since Arthur Ashe in 1975 and the first black woman to win one of those tournaments since Althea Gibson in 1958.
Williams became the epitome of athletic greatness — and carried aspirations for gender and racial equality — for at least two decades.
Along the way, he demonstrated to the world the incredible power to break down barriers and destroy norms. The Vogue article, a first-person narrative, feels tellingly symbolic, though long overdue, given Williams’ struggles to compete in recent years. She did not reveal the news on her Instagram account, on ESPN or at a postgame news conference. No, Williams does what he wants, when he wants, the way he wants.
Of course she has Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, who loves tennis, on her speed dial. Of course she was going to announce that she was breaking out of tennis through one of the top fashion magazines in the world.
Serena Williams has never let tennis define her.
With the news of retirement, our memories of her come in waves. Oh how she loved to entertain and put on a show. Wasn’t that what attracted us? She had an ability, a yearning, a will that demanded to be seen. Watching her stride across a Grand Slam center court during a first-round match or pressurized final was entertainment at its best. She drew crowds at the time and brought with her those who would otherwise never have seen a tennis match.
Those new fans and many proven tennis lovers who had watched the game for years supported her when she struggled or became involved in disputes for the ferocious manner in which she sometimes punctured the rules of court decorum.
Who could forget the US Open in 2018, when he had a heated clash with the chair umpire who deducted first a point and then an entire game towards the end of a loss to Naomi Osaka? The entire spectrum of her tennis career—the dozens of exciting wins and the sometimes tortuous losses—is woven into the tapestry that is Serena Williams.
Race can never be left out when we talk about Serena or Venus Williams, the older sister who started it all. Her blackness and her physical stature, both of which contrasted with a world of tennis where only a few shared a similar look, felt impressive.
Ashe and Gibson were good players who were great at times. Yannick Noah, the son of a black Cameroonian father and a white mother, won the French Open in 1983. A handful of other black players, men and women, left brief but important marks on tennis.
No one ran over the game or dominated it with the violent consistency of the Williams sisters.
Serena added a bold challenge to the task, as predicted with certainty by her father, Richard Williams, who, even when Venus was first breaking out on the tennis scene, mentioned that Serena was going to become the greatest tennis player in history.
Only the elite of the elite can change the way their sport is played. He thinks about Stephen Curry’s influence on modern basketball and his fixation on long-range shooting. Or the revolutionary impact of Tiger Woods on golf. Add Williams to that group.
Others developed a power game before her — Jennifer Capriati, for example — just as there were other 3-point shooters before Curry. Williams took the game to new heights. She reached that 1999 US Open final against Martina Hingis, who had catapulted herself to the top of the rankings by playing it fine and exploiting all angles as the old guard prescribed. After Williams’ power, speed and determination dispatched Hingis 6-3, 7-6, tennis would never be the same.
Now, Williams plans to end this phase of her life after her last match at the US Open, be it a first-round loss or another conclusion against all odds: winning it all, at age 40, after barely stepping foot on a court on tour for the past year.
Williams won’t back down easily. He made that clear when he announced what he called his “evolution,” which will include trying to have another child. Williams noted that his attempts clashed with his continuing tennis career, a fact that professional male athletes do not have to contend with.
This seems like the last stage of his career, but Williams should never surprise us. I wouldn’t be shocked if maybe with a second child or more, he showed up on the pro tour again, if only for a taste of the prominence of sports.
If Serena Williams wants to do it, she will. It’s the least we know.
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