BarcelonaNo one has won as many Grand Slam tournaments as her. Whenever Federer, Nadal and Djokovic battled it out to be the man with the most titles, Serena Williams wrinkled her nose, aware that someone would talk about the greatest tennis player of all time when she has 23 titles and Nadal has 22.
The American, 40 years old, has announced that this season will be her last in an article in the magazine Vogue. “I don’t like the word withdraw. Perhaps the best way to describe it is that I am ready to step forward, to evolve. I’m here to tell you that I’m evolving outside of tennis, towards other important things in my life,” he wrote. In 2017, Williams became the mother of a first child, Olympia, and has already explained other times that she wants to be a mother again.
“I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and my family. It’s not fair. If I were a guy I wouldn’t be writing these words because I’d be playing and winning while my wife would be doing the physical work of raising the family”, admitted in his article Williams, who has left the door open to the fact that the next Grand Slam, the US Open which starts at the beginning of September, will be his last tournament. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to win in New York, but I’ll try. I’m sure there’s a fantasy among the fans that I can match Margaret Court’s Grand Slams record. They wanted her to match her record in London, beat it in New York. . and then another. Nothing, a fantasy. I’m not looking for a farewell ceremony, I’m not good at saying goodbye,” he explained in reference to Australian Margaret Court’s record 24 Grand Slam tournaments, which she achieved when the circuit was different, before the one known as era Open. Williams is the player with the most Grand Slam titles in this professional era.
Born in 1981 in Michigan, Williams grew up in California, where her father Richard took it upon herself to train her and her sister Venus anywhere he could, like public parks or rough club courts. been Without the resources to get into expensive clubs to play in, Richard Williams recorded videos on VHS to take to coaches to get his daughters to play the sport. A complicated education, in a neighborhood with problems of violence, which has ended up being turned into the film King Richard, produced by Venus and Serena themselves in tribute to a father who is both passionate and controversial, with problems with skirts, violence and fights. When Serena was 9 years old, coach Rick Macci accepted the girls into his academy in Florida, where the best American player of the time, Jennifer Capriati, was leading. The whole family moved to Palm Beach, where they would train without competing at the decision of their parents, who did not want them to go too fast. The parents’ idea was that the two would not make their debut until they were 16 years old, which led them to break up with Macci years later.
Serena would debut in a professional tournament in October 1995, at the age of 14, after insisting a lot to her parents to follow in the footsteps of her older sister, Venus. The two generated great anticipation among the press, as they had achieved great fame years before in tournaments of lower categories. And they quickly succeeded. In 1999, aged just 18, she won her first US Open by defeating Switzerland’s Martina Hingis, and began a reign in which only one woman could occasionally stop her: her sister venus In total, Serena has won 23 Grand Slam titles (7 times in Australia, 3 times in Roland Garros, 7 times in Wimbledon and 6 times in New York) and has played in the final against her sister 9 times. In addition, partnering with Venus, she has been Olympic doubles champion three times and individual champion once, in 2012, in London. Number one in the professional rankings for 319 weeks, she has also won 14 Grand Slam tournaments in doubles and 2 in mixed doubles. In total, he has won more than 200 tournaments.
Becoming an icon, Serena Williams has campaigned against racism in a sport where, when she started, it was difficult to find black players. She has also been active in the feminist struggle and has studied art, specializing in fashion, one of her passions. His fame has led him to appear in Pixar films characterized as a cartoon or in Beyonce’s videos and to be received by Barack Obama. “You have to be blind not to see how black women are paid less, have less rights, and have always been cut off from the American Dream. If my achievements have opened doors, it will all have been worth it,” she said recently in an interview.
