Serena Williams, a tennis superstar bows out

Moments after Serena Williams upset the current world number two at the US Open on Wednesday, extending what is expected to be her swan song in the sport she has transformed, a courtside reporter asked her if she was surprised with her level of play.

The tennis world met Williams and her sister Venus as braces-bedecked teenagers more than 20 years ago, two prodigies from Compton, California who couldn’t contain their delight in taking over the game. Now 40, the 23-time Grand Slam champion merely laughed at the question. “I mean,” she said with a shrug, “I’m just Serena.”

“Just Serena” currently holds more major trophies won in the Open era than any man or woman, four Olympic gold medals and more than double the career prize money of any player on the women’s tour.

“She has been very inspirational off the court,” said Chris Evert, the 18-time Grand Slam champion and commentator for ESPN. “The intangibles, the fearlessness in her, has really impressed me. The fact that she has never set any limits, in tennis or in life. To get that message across to everybody is very, very powerful.”

Born in Michigan in 1981, the youngest of five sisters, Williams moved to Compton after their father Richard devised a plan to coach Venus and Serena to greatness. The patriarch had seen a tennis pro receiving a cheque for $40,000 on television and decided his two youngest daughters could set up the family for life if they could break into the sport.

By her teens, Serena had inked a multimillion-dollar deal to be outfitted by Puma, while Venus signed with Reebok. In 1999, Serena shocked the tennis world by beating Martina Hingis for the US Open title. Two years later, the sisters met each other in a major final for the first time, a television ratings smash.

Along the way, Williams has faced hardship and controversy. There was the 2003 murder of her elder half-sister Yetunde Price, who was fatally shot in Compton not far from the tennis courts where the Williams girls began to play. Over the years, she has struggled with knee injuries and a near-fatal pulmonary embolism, and has been forced to endure racist comments and caricatures. A form-fitting Nike jumpsuit at the 2018 French Open drew the ire of tournament organisers and prompted a global discourse on the politicisation of women’s bodies, particularly those of black women.

Later that year, Williams lost to Naomi Osaka in the US Open final, after a meltdown in which she called the umpire “a thief” for fining her for receiving coaching and smashing her racket. The episode may have cost Williams what would have been her 24th Slam trophy, but it shifted the conversation about how competitive women can or should behave. “I think she’s changed the way women compete,” said Evert. “It’s OK to be ferocious, passionate, and vocal out there on the court and still be a woman.”

Perhaps Williams’s greatest sporting legacy has been her longevity. This year’s French Open runner-up, Coco Gauff, said she has been coming to the US Open for 10 years, originally as a spectator. “We only really came to see Serena or Venus, to be honest. As a kid, I didn’t care. I know it sounds bad but I didn’t care about anyone else, really.” 

Danielle Collins, the Australian Open finalist who defeated Osaka in the first round, confronted the prospect of facing Williams. “I’ve idolised Serena and Venus my whole life, they’ve been people I’ve really looked up to . . . Hopefully, I don’t have to play Serena at some point because I’ll be so torn.”

If Arthur Ashe Stadium is the world’s largest cathedral to tennis, then this week nearly every sermon has been about the end of the Williams era. Tributes from Oprah, Billie Jean King, and Queen Latifah have played around her matches. Street sellers hawking “Farewell Serena” T-shirts fill the boardwalk.

Whenever Williams finally steps off the court, she said her decision to “evolve away” from tennis came from her desire to spend more time on her venture capital fund, Serena Ventures, and to add to her family with her husband, the Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. On the business front, Williams joins a generation of athletes building empires on the side before leaving their sport, such as LeBron James and Tom Brady. Serena Ventures is focused on investing in diverse founders: black women received just a fraction of one per cent of total venture funding in the US in 2021.

Her experience with motherhood — from winning the 2017 Australian Open in the second month of pregnancy, to nearly dying of complications from her caesarean section, to calling out the fact that maternity leave dented her tour ranking — has made Williams an exemplar for many navigating modern parenthood.

“I don’t like the phrase ‘you can have it all’ because that’s not really true. But what Serena has done is show that it shouldn’t be one or the other, tennis or a family. You can have both,” said Kayla Gabriele, a teacher from New Jersey who came to Flushing along with tens of thousands of others this week to bid Williams adieu.

“You have to remember, we had Serena before we even had a black president,” said Warren Seay, an attorney from Texas, who said it was important to him to see the woman he had idolised since childhood one last time. “Whether she wins or loses, just her being here is enough. She shows you can do this on your own terms.”

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