After more than two decades as one of tennis’ premier stars, Serena Williams has announced her intentions to conclude her unprecedented athletic career. In an as-told-to essay for Vogue, Williams speaks about balancing family life with her profession, her complicated feelings around the idea of “retirement,” and her goals moving forwards.
“I have never liked the word retirement. It doesn’t feel like a modern word to me,” Williams wrote. “Maybe the best word to describe what I’m up to is evolution. I’m here to tell you that I’m evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me.”
While she does not reveal a definitive date for the end, she implies that it could be after this year’s US Open. In the piece, Williams, who is about to turn 41, opens up about her young daughter’s desire for a sibling, and the way that women in sports have to choose between having a family and continuing to play. “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 labor of expanding our family,” she wrote. In 2017, Williams completed a dominant run to the Australian Open championship, in which she never lost a set, while pregnant. Williams says she and her husband, Alexis Ohanian, want to have another child, but that she is not interested in having another child while part of the tour. “I need to be two feet into tennis or two feet out,” she acknowledged.
When Williams does retire, she’ll be celebrated as not only one of tennis’ all-time greats, but also for having one of the most dominant runs in pro sports history. Williams has won 23 grand slams—the most by any tennis player in the Open Era—and she also dominated the doubles circuit, with multiple wins in the US Open, Wimbledon, French Open, and Australian Open. (In the essay, Williams acknowledges that she has not beaten Margaret Court’s pre-Open Era record, but noted that “should have had 30-plus grand slams,” were it not for the time she had to take off due to her pregnancies and a terrifying experience with a blood clot in 2010.)
She also references recently retired star players like Ashleigh Barty and Caroline Wozniacki, who she believes felt more emotionally ready to leave the sport than she currently does. “I hate that I have to be at this crossroads. I keep saying to myself, I wish it could be easy for me, but it’s not. I’m torn: I don’t want it to be over, but at the same time I’m ready for what’s next,” she admits.
In poetic fashion, it seems like Williams’ final major tournament will be the 2022 U.S. Open, which takes place from late August through early September. She won her first singles grand slam there back in 1999, when she was just 17, and could potentially tie Court’s record with a victory.
“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. It’s a good fantasy,’” Williams wrote. “But I’m not looking for some ceremonial, final on-court moment.”
Still, it’s hard not to root for such a transformational, boundary-breaking career to have a storybook ending.
