Serena Williams

The 23-time grand-slam champion won her first singles match for more than a year on Monday but has revealed in a first-person piece for Vogue that she has ...

I keep saying to myself, 'I wish it could be easy for me', but it's not. I'm terrible at goodbyes, the world's worst." And the lead-up tournaments will be fun.

Serena Williams has confirmed she will retire from tennis after a career that has seen her win 23 grand slam singles titles.

This week Williams is competing at the National Bank Open in Toronto, where on Monday she defeated Nuria Parrizas-Diaz 6-3, 6-4 to win her first singles match since June 2021. In her lengthy, emotional essay in Vogue, Williams explained that, after injuring her hamstring at Wimbledon last year and taking a year away from the sport, she was unsure about ever returning. Williams made her singles return at Wimbledon in June, losing in the first round to France’s Harmony Tan. Over the course of a historic career that has spanned nearly three decades since its beginnings on the public courts of Compton, California, Williams has won an Open era record of 23 grand slam singles titles, earning a total of $94,588,910 in prize money and much more in endorsements. Williams has spent much of the past few years off the court preparing for the moment she decided to move on, including by setting up a venture capital company, Serena Ventures, and investing in various organisations. “I have never liked the word retirement,” she wrote.

Serena Williams says she has never liked the word retirement, but that she is evolving away from tennis after winning 23 Grand Slams across her iconic ...

"Maybe she doesn't have the record of 24, but what she's accomplished as well as her back story to achieve what she's achieved. "No question about it, she is the greatest male or female tennis player at the moment. I'm a fan of them and I want to say thank you to them." "Unfortunately I wasn't ready to win Wimbledon this year," she added in the article. "I know there's a fan fantasy that I might have tied Margaret that day in London, then maybe beat her record in New York, and then at the trophy ceremony say, 'See ya!' I get that. You talk about tennis to a black person and it's the Williams sisters, that's just what it is. I looked up to them and I still do. Williams noted that her and her partner Alexis are trying for another child, and that she did not want to be pregnant as an athlete again. "When I tell people in the neighbourhood 'I'm a tennis player' they're like 'oh so you're trying to do that Williams sister thing?'. They're a staple. "Maybe the best word to describe what I'm up to is evolution. "I've been reluctant to admit that I have to move on from playing tennis. I've been thinking of this as a transition but I want to be sensitive about how I use that word, which means something very specific and important to a community of people.

Here, the PA news agency assesses where the American stands in a women's top 10. 1. Serena Williams (Date of birth 26/09/81, 23 grand slam singles titles).

She won her last slam title, in mixed doubles, at the US Open in 2006 a month before her 50th birthday. She also won 40 slam titles in doubles, giving her a record 64 titles in total. She is the only tennis player in history to win the Golden Slam – all four titles and Olympic singles gold, doing so in 1988. Her career ended abruptly at 19 after she seriously injured her leg in a riding accident. In 1933 she beat the eighth-ranked US male player in an exhibition match. How many slam titles Seles might have won had she not been stabbed is one of the great unanswerable tennis questions. Elegant Frenchwoman Lenglen was a superstar in the 1920s. It is appropriate that Evert and Navratilova ended their careers tied on 18 slam singles titles because they dominated their era. A true all-rounder, the German’s powerful, athletic game – particularly her forehand – made her a force on all surfaces, and she won every slam title four times or more. Her serve was the best in the history of women’s tennis and her powerful game was much imitated but never bettered. Williams won every slam title at least three times and held all four titles on two occasions. She also won four Olympic gold medals and 16 slam titles in doubles.

Williams' 23 Grand Slam singles titles is an Open Era record for women or men. The only tennis athlete with more major singles titles is Australia's Margaret ...

You may click on “Your Choices” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. If you click “Agree and Continue” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic.

Arguably the best female tennis player in history, Serena Williams, is set to finish her career following the next grand slam in the United States. During a press conference on her home turf, the tennis steamroller stated her intent to move away from ...

I need to be two feet into tennis or two feet out,” she confessed to Vogue. “I’ve been reluctant to admit that I have to move on from playing tennis. However, each day new stars are born, such as WTA’s number one Polish Iga Świątek. It is but a matter of time before new bold players get discovered. I definitely don’t want to be pregnant again as an athlete. It comes up, and I start to cry. Maybe the best word to describe what I’m up to is evolution.

Serena Williams announced on Tuesday the countdown to her retirement had begun from tennis after a career which brought her 23 Grand Slam singles titles.

To play today knowing she was injured, she's definitely up there with the real fighters and champions." She was also the first black woman to win a major since Althea Gibson in 1958.#photo1 I'm so happy." Venus battled gallantly despite an abdominal injury and hip problem before losing 4-6, 6-4, 6-2.#photo4 It's pretty exciting for me," she said. "I am so happy to have won my second Grand Slam in three years, but obviously I am also a little bit sad for my sister," said Serena who went on to win the French Open again in 2013 and 2015.

The rival Williams is most well-acquainted with, her sister Venus, owns seven Grand Slam titles and 49 singles titles throughout her career. Still, Serena ...

That is just three more than Serena Williams has won on her own. Steffi Graf is the only other woman to accomplish that feat. In 555 career matches against top-10 opponents, Williams owns a record of 435-120, which comes out to a jaw-dropping 78.0% win percentage. Perhaps the most impressive and lop-sided rivalry of Williams' career was against Maria Sharapova. Those two met 22 times throughout their careers, and Williams won a whopping 20 of them. The Grand Slam tournaments represent tennis' biggest stage, and Williams seems to love the spotlight they provide. Still, Serena Williams has frequently gotten the better of that matchup with a 19-12 record against Venus.

Billie Jean King has described Serena Williams as tennis's 'greatest player' following the 23-time grand slam singles champion's announcement that she will ...

Paying her own tribute to Williams, Emma Raducanu, the US Open champion, said: “She definitely changed the game. Pam Shriver, the former world No 3, added: “She [Williams] has impacted tennis on the court and off the court. Speaking to USA Today, the former men’s world No 1, John McEnroe, said of Williams: “She should do whatever she wants.

Her record of 23 grand slam singles titles in the Open era stands alone but Williams' tennis legacy goes far beyond statistics.

After giving birth at the age of 36, she returned and eventually compiled a run of four grand slam finals in six events late in her 30s. It began with the turbulence of teenage success, a US Open champion at 17 in 1999, then the two and a half years it took for her to win a second. Less credited are Serena Williams’s other defining qualities; her intelligence, her court sense, her ability to problem-solve under suffocating pressure and find a solution on the court. Considering the number of setbacks that Williams has been forced to reckon with because of injury, depression and life‑threatening illness, her longevity is hard to believe. At the 2017 Australian Open while pregnant with her daughter, Alexis Olympia, Williams surpassed Graf to secure the Open-era record of a 23rd grand slam title. Seven years ago, as Serena Williams continued to consolidate her career records and her claims as the greatest of all time, a reporter asked her to identify the all-time record in her sights.

How to measure the GOAT. Serena Williams did not surpass Margaret Court's 24 Grand Slam titles and by that metric, with 23 big singles wins, she falls one ...

Her legacy will be a player who was untouchable at her best and a personality that shaped culture with her seamless movement between issues of sport and race and gender. The first black family of tennis didn’t disappoint with the pair winning a total of 30 Grand Slam titles in singles and teaming up for 14 doubles titles. If I were a guy, I wouldn’t be writing this because I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labour of expanding our family,” Williams told Vogue. Planning to make her professional debut as a wild-card entry in a tournament in Oakland, California, she was denied by the WTA owing to their age-eligibility restrictions. “Maybe I’d be more of a Tom Brady if I had that opportunity. Seven of Serena’s singles titles were at Wimbledon, the last one arriving in 2016 with her last Grand Slam win in Australia a year later. That she chose Vogue, a fashion, not a tennis magazine pointed to where her future might take her in the “what next” phase of her life. In 2009, she became a minority owner of the Miami Dolphins after purchasing a small stake in the team. Theirs was a colourful arrival with a new level of power game and freighted with a fearless attitude. It was older sister Venus who first worked her way to the top as younger Serena followed. She and her sister Venus were the first black women to hold any amount of ownership in an NFL franchise. It was the 21st time that Williams had played Wimbledon. It was Tan’s first visit.

The tennis great's decision is a stark reminder that even in 2022, women's time is still not our own. Serena Williams waving to the crowd at Wimbledon, ...

Williams’s retirement – and the fact that she has been so open about resenting that she must make this choice – are stark reminders that even in 2022, women’s time is often not our own. “I’m going to miss that version of me, that girl who played tennis,” Williams said at the end of her farewell. It is something that many women have dreamt about – the opportunity to be fully invested in our careers while we are at work and fully invested in our families outside of it. It is noticeable in sport because of its public visibility and because it is a physically demanding job. She is making a choice that women all over the world make every day: family or career? Except that in Williams’s mind, it would not be a fairytale.