Serena Williams

Serena Williams described her desire to be “perfect.” “I know perfect doesn't exist,” she wrote in Vogue earlier this month, announcing her plans to leave ...

[something related to her use of a finger roll](https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-serena-williams-rules-the-finger-roll-toss-1441656755). Reflecting on her fastest, 128.6-mph serve at the 2013 Australian Open, Williams remarked that it was “my fastest that went in. Williams has attributed her serve’s consistency to the details. The Grand Slam titles came easily when she won an astronomically high percentage of first serve points, [harder when her first serve was marginally off](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/serena-williams-will-need-to-serve-better-to-tie-margaret-court/). By changing the serve’s spin from slice to topspin, she would hamper her opponents’ ability to make a quality return. This makes it virtually impossible for the returner, who can only guess,” said Joseph Oyebog, a former hitting partner to the Williams sisters early in their career. [Fluid like water](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDynWX27zIk) but [powerful like a jackhammer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FMtTiLak2Q), Williams’s serve has underpinned her 23 Grand Slam victories — more than any player in the Open Era. Williams turned professional in 1995 at age 14, following the lead of her older sister Venus. But more important than possessing raw speed, her serve has been consistent. Williams’s serve speed often exceeded that of her male counterparts. Unfortunately, the WTA did not start keeping match statistics until 2008, which lops off the first 13 years of her incredible career — a period in which she won six majors. “But whatever my perfect was, I never wanted to stop until I got it right.” Williams’s serve — the most elementally sound component of her game — might come as statistically close to perfection as a tennis stroke can get.

Williams is the WTA's all-time career earnings leader and is one of the richest female athletes ever.

She has invested in numerous businesses during her career that will keep her busy in the next phase of her life. The Williams sisters became stakeholders in August 2009. Williams has used her career earnings to successfully invest in multiple businesses. The team, Angel City FC, plays in Los Angeles. "It’s one of 16 unicorns — companies valued at more than $1 billion — that Serena Ventures has funded, along with Tonal, Impossible Foods, Noom, and Esusu, to name a few. "This year we raised $111 million of outside financing, from banks, private individuals and family offices. [Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettknight/2022/08/09/serena-williams-tennis-retirement-net-worth-earnings/?sh=319a6a964d83). She has the 90th-highest net worth among self-made women worldwide. She also will have plenty of money at her disposal. In addition to Serena Williams' earnings, she has racked up numerous endorsement deals off the court. Below is a breakdown of Williams' net worth, how she has amassed her wealth and what business ventures she will participate in during her retirement. [as more of an "evolution"](https://www.sportingnews.com/us/tennis/news/serena-williams-retiring-us-open-tennis/hmdzzpdtcefe9ojpwwerkjre) into the next stage of her life.

When the world champion, who helped professionalize women's tennis, watches Williams play, she says, she thanks God: “Serena is living our dream.”

She founded the Women’s Sports Foundation and the Women’s Tennis Association and was the first female athlete to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She can relate to a lot of different people, and people can relate to her because of what she’s been through. She founded the Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative and is a part owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Angel City F.C. I think she could make even a bigger difference in the second part of her life than the first. She has accomplished so much, and she has also had some hardships, including the murder of her half sister, the racism that she has endured as a Black woman and the complications she suffered after the birth of her daughter. Every time I see the other women from the Original Nine and we talk about the state of our sport, we say, “Isn’t this great?” They’re living the dream. She loves the attention and knows how to cope with it. It sets the tone for the intensity of her game. And we wanted to be able to make a living playing tennis. When she’s down 30-40 or 15-40, she can throw in a couple of aces, and before you know it, it’s deuce again. The technique, power and rhythm of her serve are unbelievable. Her presence and politics raised the game.

As one of the greatest athletes of all time, Serena has created change on and off the court. She talks to TIME about her decision to retire.

“I just get more love and more joy out of what I do in the VC space.” “I can’t imagine my life without my sisters,” she says. “A lot of people feel they’re not pretty or they’re not cute enough because their skin is dark,” she says. “I was heavily influenced by her experience and the comeback,” says Felix. “Even though the doctor was like, ‘You’ve got to take it easy, 100° heat, yadda, yadda, yadda,’ Serena said, ‘I got this.’ As long as she was confident, I was confident.” Serena told her husband that she didn’t drop a set the entire tournament because she knew it was best to get off the court quickly, for the baby’s sake. “I remember as a kid watching in awe, and I was so happy to be seeing a strong Black woman on my screen,” she tells TIME. She grieved the death of older sister Yetunde Price, who was killed in a 2003 shooting, in a case of mistaken identity. “The tennis world was not accustomed to seeing Black girls show up adorned in styles reflecting their African American cultural heritage, as opposed to wearing styles that blended in,” says Tera Hunter, a professor of African American studies at Princeton University. “And I haven’t seen to this day.” “I think I’m good at it,” she says of parenthood. 1, that she was soon to be done with the life that made her an inspiration to millions, Olympia’s reply was as joyful as her mother’s celebrations after so many Grand Slam wins: a fist-pumping “Yes!” “It’s hard to completely commit,” says Williams, “when your flesh and blood is saying, Aw.”

Proclaiming the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion the greatest women's tennis player of all time is a worthwhile debate, but not a straightforward one.

“During Serena’s great years in her 30s, she had no formidable rival to test her to the hilt; that is not her fault but a factor,” Flink added, of the GOAT debate. Her approach has been shaped perhaps by her faith (she is a Jehovah’s Witness) and perhaps because of the risk athletes from earlier generations ran with sponsors for straying outside the lines (“Republicans buy sneakers, too,” Michael Jordan once said). That had no precedent in women’s tennis, and it is one of the strongest arguments for bestowing GOAT status on Williams. She went 20-2 against her tennis muse Maria Sharapova, a blond Russian who out-earned her in sponsorships for years, which Williams understandably viewed as an injustice in light of her superior résumé. Graf is also the only player, male or female, to complete the so-called Golden Slam, winning all four majors and the Olympic singles title in 1988. She and her older sister Venus changed the game and raised the bar for the opposition, many of whom could not keep up, fading or retiring while the Williamses continued. Graf, the only player to have won all four majors at least four times, finished with 22 Grand Slam singles titles despite playing about a decade less than Williams. And though 11 of Court’s major singles titles came in Australia when it had smaller draws and often weaker fields than other majors, 24 is still the number that Williams has been chasing openly and unsuccessfully since taking her own maternity leave in 2017. Performance is part of it but surely not all of it, and it seems fitting that the first athlete to embrace the GOAT acronym was Muhammad Ali, who billed himself understandably as “the Greatest” and managed some of his business interests through a company named G.O.A.T. The game and equipment have improved drastically (Navratilova and her friendly rival Chris Evert once played with wooden rackets), and the measures of success have shifted, too. Court, an imposing net rusher from Australia who dominated her rivalry with King, finished with 24 Grand Slam singles titles and 64 Grand Slam titles overall. A successful Black woman in a predominantly white sport, she has beaten the odds, and talented opponents from multiple generations, across four decades.

World number one Iga Świątek has shared a heartwarming photo with tennis legend Serena Williams.

I haven’t talked to her but I’m just trying to say ‘hi.’” “And I feel like I’m a kid from kindergarten looking at her. I see Serena and it’s like ‘WOW, Serena,’ you know? “The thing is that I have a hard-time catching eye contact with Serena,” Świątek said earlier this month. [tributes have been pouring in](https://www.givemesport.com/88053261-serena-williams-naomi-osaka-feels-stressed-out-when-talking-to-idol) since Williams made the announcement, and Świątek has joined in with the plaudits. “🤩 So…this is the highlight of my day,” Świątek posted on Twitter, alongside a photo with Williams.

Since returning to tennis as a mother in 2018, Serena Williams has not ruled the courts with the same dominance she once displayed, but has overtaken her ...

Q Scores rates Williams a 78 in terms of recognition, well above other female athletes. “I love the fact that the top two women on that list are women of colour, which means we have come a long way in terms of being able to be universally accepted as viable brand ambassadors,” Allen said. Leslie Allen, a former top US tennis player who is African American, said the business world has long underestimated the ability of people like Williams to appeal to consumers of all races, calling her marketing success “overdue.” Allen rejoices that the other woman on the Forbes list of top athletes is four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka, who is of Haitian and Japanese descent. With Margaret Court’s record of 24 Slam titles in her sights, Williams has reached four major finals as a mother, but lost all of them – setbacks that have perhaps endeared her to the public. “Much like anything with women’s sports and marketing, we have a long way to go,” said Danette Leighton, chief executive officer of the Women’s Sports Foundation. Advocates for women in sports celebrate Williams for breaking through the glass ceiling in marketing as a woman of colour, but note that only two of the top 50 Forbes athletes are female.

The U.S. Open officially begins today with some notable tennis stars missing. But one is the talk of the tournament. Serena Williams is making what's ...

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The 23-time Grand Slam champion could be playing her final singles match on Monday at 7 p.m. at Arthur Ashe Stadium. She also plans to play doubles with her ...

After that match, Arthur Ashe will host the first round men’s singles match between Australians [Nick Kyrgios](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/magazine/tennis-us-open-electric-infuriating-nick-kyrgios.html) and Thanasi Kokkinakis. Then after winning a first-round match in the [National Bank Open](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/10/sports/tennis/serena-williams-canadian-open.html) in Toronto in early August, Williams appeared on the cover of [Vogue magazine](https://www.vogue.com/article/serena-williams-retirement-in-her-own-words), and in an article she shared that she planned to step away from tennis sometime after the U.S. Consider buying a night session ticket for Louis Armstrong Stadium and watching the Williams match on a big screen set up in front of Arthur Ashe. [In the second round](https://twitter.com/usopen/status/1562832865754517505), she would face the winner of [Anett Kontaveit](https://www.wtatennis.com/players/318425/anett-kontaveit) and [Jaqueline Cristian](https://www.wtatennis.com/players/320319/jaqueline-cristian). Eastern — the final day of the tournament, just before the men’s singles final. [set to play Danka Kovinic](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/sports/tennis/us-open-draw-serena-williams.html) in the first round of the tournament on Monday, with her match scheduled for 7 p.m. [ose in the first round](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/28/sports/tennis/serena-williams-wimbledon.html). Resale tickets in the midlevel of Arthur Ashe were selling for about $1,000 and up as of Sunday. 80 in the world. Tickets in the lowest level of the stadium were selling for more than $7,500 each. As of Sunday afternoon, the cheapest seats available on resale for Monday night in Arthur Ashe were well over $200 each and in the nosebleeds. Afterward, a large crowd of fans watched as she exited the tennis center complex in a black sport utility vehicle.

There are 63 other matches on opening day, but they have been relegated to the background as Williams prepares to play what could be her final singles ...

Open final](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/09/sports/serena-osaka-us-open-penalty.html) in a match where Williams was penalized a game after a series of code violations by chair umpire Carlos Ramos. “I think it’s great that we have somebody like that in our sport who cleared the path and showed us that you can do anything,” she said. “I was really scared: Dang, when is the last time she’s going to play? “Basically she was everywhere, because she always won and was somewhere in the semifinals or the finals. Open men’s champion](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/sports/tennis/us-open-mens-final-zverev-thiem.html), will return to the tournament after missing last year’s Open with a serious wrist injury. Stories like this are possible because of our deep commitment to original reporting, produced by a global staff of over 1,700 journalists who have all dedicated themselves to helping you understand the world. “I watch her my whole life,” Swiatek, the 21-year-old Polish star, said of the 40-year-old Williams. But they are all relegated to the background for now as Williams, one of the greatest athletes of any generation, prepares to play what could be her final singles match on Monday night in the first round against the unseeded Danka Kovinic. 10 seed and top-ranked American who is himself the son of former top 10 women’s player Kathy May. Until this year, no Chinese man had qualified to play in the U.S. Open, Swiatek had another priority: finally working up the courage to meet Serena Williams, a formidable champion whom Swiatek said made her feel like “a kid from kindergarten just looking at her.” 1 for the first time this year at the U.S.

Serena Williams's Career at the U.S. Open? Well, It's Complicated. It seems fitting the 23-time Grand Slam winner is prepping her tennis swan song at the place ...

Serena won six matches and, two sets away from her long-avowed goal of tying Margaret Court’s record of 24 majors, again matched up in the final against a young opponent who had never been in the situation. Such was the case in the final, when she betrayed defiance to match her ball-striking and beat Victoria Azarenka, 6–2, 2–6, 7–5. In the final, she faced Naomi Osaka, one of, by now, a vast cohort of players who cited Serena as their inspiration for playing tennis. Venus Williams was, in the eyes of many, the favorite to win the U.S. In retrospect, this is a match Serena likely wishes she had back. Ahead 3–1 in Grand Slam titles, Venus defeated Serena in straight sets, less a competitive match than a prime-time acknowledgment that this tableau—two sisters raised in the same Compton home, batting back titles as if in a playful tennis rally—marked the most remarkable story in sports. Serena lost in three sets but served notice (at 110 mph) that she was already a formidable player. There have been moments in which she was in the wrong. And who did she meet in the third round? Open finals, a run punctuated by fearless tennis but perhaps best recalled for an ugly chest-bump incident with Romanian Irina Spirlea, a bit of foreshadowing that the Williams sisters' party-crashing would be met in some quarters with some ugly resistance. And for individual athletes, who travel a circuit and have no home field or court, there is also the issue of where to say when. Barring the unlikely—a caveat one must always include with Serena—she will

Williams is the WTA's all-time career earnings leader and is one of the richest female athletes ever.

She has invested in numerous businesses during her career that will keep her busy in the next phase of her life. The Williams sisters became stakeholders in August 2009. Williams has used her career earnings to successfully invest in multiple businesses. The team, Angel City FC, plays in Los Angeles. "It’s one of 16 unicorns — companies valued at more than $1 billion — that Serena Ventures has funded, along with Tonal, Impossible Foods, Noom, and Esusu, to name a few. "This year we raised $111 million of outside financing, from banks, private individuals and family offices. [Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettknight/2022/08/09/serena-williams-tennis-retirement-net-worth-earnings/?sh=319a6a964d83). She has the 90th-highest net worth among self-made women worldwide. She also will have plenty of money at her disposal. In addition to Serena Williams' earnings, she has racked up numerous endorsement deals off the court. Below is a breakdown of Williams' net worth, how she has amassed her wealth and what business ventures she will participate in during her retirement. [as more of an "evolution"](https://www.sportingnews.com/us/tennis/news/serena-williams-retiring-us-open-tennis/hmdzzpdtcefe9ojpwwerkjre) into the next stage of her life.

Tennis champion Serena Williams has been making “strange claims” about breaking Margaret Court's still unbeaten Grand Slam record, says Sky News host Rita ...

Here's everything you need to know about Serena Williams' match with Danka Kovinic at the U.S. Open, including broadcast information and start time.

ESPN Deportes ESPN, ESPN Deportes ESPN2, ESPN Deportes ESPN will provide coverage of the Williams vs. Canada TV Channel TV Channel The match will also be live streamed on ESPN+, ESPN3 and fuboTV, ESPN ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Deportes And Williams' faceoff with Montenegro's Danka Kovinic in the first round is another chance for Williams to get back to doing what she does best: winning matches. The iconic blue-and-green asphalt in New York's Flushing Meadows. Her last venue?

Williams said earlier this month that she plans to "evolve away from tennis" after the U.S. Open. Each match could be her last.

[The new Jackson Hole consensus: A more volatile world is here to stay](/2022/08/29/jackson-hole-global-economy-volatile) The bottom line: Win or lose tonight — or at any other point during this tournament — Williams' legacy is already set in stone. Open, where she's reached at least the semis in each of her last 11 appearances. And after winning singles gold at the 2012 Olympics, she became the only player with a [lawsuit filed by Trump](https://www.axios.com/2022/08/22/donald-trump-fbi-search-lawsuit) last week seeking the appointment of a special master to review the materials seized and prevent the FBI from examining the seized documents until the special master is in place. [Mar-a-Lago](https://www.axios.com/2022/08/08/donald-trump-home-raided-fbi) home may be protected by attorney-client privilege, the Department of Justice said in a [court filing](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763.31.0_5.pdf) Monday. 1 rankings (man or woman). It could be the last time we ever get to see the GOAT in action. But despite reaching four finals since then, she remains stuck on 23. [rather unlikely](https://slate.com/culture/2022/08/serena-williams-retirement-us-open-expectations-legacy.html)for the 413th-ranked Williams. Make sure you're by a TV Monday night for Serena Williams' first-round match at the U.S. [earlier this month](https://www.axios.com/2022/08/10/serena-williams-retirement-us-open) that she plans to "evolve away from tennis" after the U.S.

Serena and Venus Williams are pairing up for what could be the final time as doubles partners at the US Open. Here's when they'll be playing.

As a doubles pairing, Serena and Venus Williams have won the US Open twice. Serena Williams has won the US Open as a singles player six times, most recently in 2014. The channels for the match will not be announced until a time and date are given. The time and day for the Williams' sisters match has yet to be announced. Though Serena Williams has not said outright that the US Open will be the final tournament, Serena Williams ranks tied for 413th and Venus is unranked.

What will the greatest player in women's tennis do next? By Jemele Hill. A photo of Serena Williams swinging a tennis racket. Cameron ...

She has been called [a man](https://www.bbc.com/sport/tennis/29672340), and of course subjected to [racial slurs](https://www.thequint.com/sports/tennis/serena-williams-activist-voice-against-racism). Her armor against these sickening attacks was to become the best player the sport has ever seen. [Williams opened up](https://www.vogue.com/article/serena-williams-vogue-cover-interview-february-2018) about the life-threatening complications she experienced after doctors performed an emergency Cesarean section when she gave birth to her daughter. When she [beat Nuria Parrizas-Diaz at the Canadian Open earlier this month](https://www.espn.com/tennis/story/_/id/34369882/serena-williams-survives-opening-round-challenge-first-singles-win-year), it was her first singles-match victory in 14 months. Williams has been a cultural icon for so long, it’s hard to imagine that she would be anything less once she’s finally done with tennis. Characterizing all of this as evolution presumably takes the sting out of her leaving a sport to which she has devoted her life. Black women are [three times more likely than white women](https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/features/maternal-mortality/index.html) to die of pregnancy-related complications, so Williams’s public sharing of her ordeal became a powerful tool in the ongoing conversation about racial disparities in health care. Open match with Danka Kovinic tonight is indeed her last match ever at the Open (or if this is her last tournament appearance, period) Williams can retire knowing that words cannot fully describe what she’s meant for the sport, for women—especially Black women—and for American culture. Who else could win a major title while two months pregnant, as she did at the Australian Open in 2017? She wants to expand her family and dive even deeper into her numerous business enterprises, which include a venture-capital firm, Serena Ventures, that She and her sister Venus represent one of the most improbable success stories in American history. Even calling her one of the most dominant athletes in history feels confining.

The game-changing tennis player used her clothes as a statement of self and a weapon of change.

Williams jumped to actual Vogue in 1998, when she and her sister posed for the magazine in black and white Carolina Herrera, an appearance that heralded the start of a friendship with Anna Wintour, the Vogue editor (and tennis superfan), that has been by, Ms. Those “distractions” are in fact part of the bedrock of Ms. She even walked a Paris Fashion Week runway last March, for the [Off-White Virgil Abloh tribute show](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/style/virgil-abloh-off-white-paris-fashion-week.html). Flynn of Nike said, “the message.” It set off such a firestorm — the French officials deemed it a dress code violation — that her next outfit, a one-sleeve tutu worn to the U.S. “Of course, all of these semantics really just reinforce the white supremacy latent in the sport and justify the exclusion of any person or body that stands outside of the prescribed participants and audience. Ford said, in the style of “respectability politics,” to fit in. Williams’s honor, said that on a scale of 1 to 10 of involvement with her clothes, she is a 10. Williams knew “how many eyes and how many cameras were on her,” said John Hoke, the chief design officer of Nike, who has been working with her for almost 20 years. Literally, in the case of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, a.k.a. It was highly gendered, in the most stereotypical kind of way (this is a sport, after all, where until the late 20th century female tennis players wore frilly bloomers, like baby dolls, under their faux skirts) and very white. Williams in an array of evening gowns, was met with some head-scratching in the sports world, it should have surprised no one.

Women's tennis expert Jose Onorato has revealed his U.S. Open 2022 picks for what could be Serena Williams' final match.

Kovinic has lost four straight matches since the 2022 French Open in May, when she won her first two outings before losing to eventual champion Iga Swiatek in the third round. Open for the third consecutive year and fifth time in her career but failed to advance past the second round in her first four attempts. Open 2022 odds and released his coveted best bet for the Williams vs. Williams won her first U.S. A six-time winner at Flushing Meadows, Williams begins her quest for one final crown when she faces Danka Kovinic on Monday in the first round of the 2022 U.S. Williams claimed her most recent U.S. Now, Onorato has scrutinized the latest U.S. Serena Williams' glorious career appears to be coming to an end as the 40-year-old superstar is expected to retire at the conclusion of the 2022 U.S. Kovinic odds from Caesars Sportsbook, while Kovinic is a +290 underdog. Onorato grew up playing competitive tennis in Caracas, Venezuela. The over/under for total games is set at 20.5, with Williams favored by 4.5 games. Williams has won 23 Grand Slam titles, the most during the Open Era, and is one major championship behind Margaret Court on the all-time list.

The transcendent and transformative star of women's tennis faces Danka Kovinic Monday night in her opening match of the U.S. Open.

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The 23-time Grand Slam singles champion is going out in style. Serena will don head-to-toe diamonds at the US Open.

On her feet, Serena will lace up a diamond-encrusted special edition of the NikeCourt Flare 2, the brand's latest statement tennis sneaker. Nike is also providing Williams with a matching jacket and tote bag for her arrival, each featuring affixed crystals meant to shine bright through the evening tennis match. Designed months ago through insights from Williams, the tennis icon will take the court in a figure skating-inspired dress.