Serena Williams has gone from teaching tennis on public courts to a gang-controlled area to become a generational star and arguably the greatest player in history.
The 40-year-old legend announced on Friday, after her elimination from the third round of the US Championship, that she is likely to retire after a title-rich career.
The African-American has become a tennis icon, winning 23 Grand Slams, breaking records and achieving achievements with a determination as strong as the energy of her shots on the court.
Serena and her sister Venus, who won seven major titles, were executive producers of King Richard, a film about their father, Richard Williams, who taught them tennis while growing up on the rugged streets of Compton, California.
“I’m still that racket girl who dreams and I play for it,” Serena said after winning the US Open in 2013.
She has already lived up to those dreams by winning seven Wimbledon and Australian Open titles, three Roland Garros titles and six in the United States, and is one title short of equaling the major slam record set by Australian Margaret Court.
She won her first major title in New York in 1999 at the age of 17, and her last in 2017 in Australia when she was pregnant with her daughter Olympia.
Olympia gave birth in September 2017 and spent six weeks bedridden with a pulmonary embolism but struggled to get back into the game after five months in the Fed Cup doubles (now the Billie Jean King Cup) alongside Venus.
She became known as “Serena Slam”, which means winning four major titles in a row, and did so in 2002–2003 starting with the French Open and again in 2014–2015 starting with the US Open.
She had the chance to win every Grand Slam in one year, but was surprised to lose to Italian Roberta Vinci in the semi-finals of the 2015 US Open.
“I never wanted to focus on numbers, I started playing tennis not to be the best, but simply because I had a racket and a dream,” Williams said.
“Players like Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova and Steffi Graf are the greatest icons in the history of women’s tennis for me.” Williams brought style and power to her performances, and at times her signature outfits detracted from her dazzling efforts on the pitch.
She won her last 73 singles titles in Oakland in January 2020, her only title since becoming a mother.
She had four chances to equal Kurt’s record, but lost both the Wimbledon and US Open finals in 2018 and 2019.
Williams has endured much struggle and suffering. Her sister by mother and another father, Yetonde Price, was shot dead in 2003 at the age of 31 by a gang member in their hometown of Compton. She was Serena’s personal assistant.
After injuring her foot after stepping on broken glass in a German restaurant days after winning Wimbledon in 2010, she required two surgeries and spent 20 weeks with a splint, an incident she believed caused life-threatening blood clots in her lungs in 2011. She was absent for about a year and three major tournaments.
