Serena Williams Announces Major Career News Ahead of U.S. Open
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Serena Williams shared a huge announcement regarding her future intentions regarding tennis.
In a Vogue September 2022 issue cover story article published Tuesday, the famed athlete revealed that she will be hitting her final tennis balls (professionally, at least) at this year's upcoming U.S. Open.
After the annual tournament, she'll be retiring from the sport to shift her focus onto more important things in her life right now, namely family building.
Williams, 40, opened up about overhearing her daughter's wish to have a little sibling. "We’re in my car, and she’s holding my phone, using an interactive educational app she likes. This robot voice asks her a question: What do you want to be when you grow up?" the star athlete recalled. "She doesn’t know I’m listening, but I can hear the answer she whispers into the phone. She says, 'I want to be a big sister.'”
Serena currently shares her one daughter, Alexis Olympia, 4, with husband Alexis Ohanian. They have both expressed the desire for a second baby.
“In the last year, Alexis and I have been trying to have another child, and we recently got some information from my doctor that put my mind at ease and made me feel that whenever we’re ready, we can add to our family,” she explained in the personal essay published by the magazine.
Though growing her family is something she's looking forward to, the Olympian revealed it is not something she's willing to undertake while still fully committed to professional sports.
“I definitely don’t want to be pregnant again as an athlete. I need to be two feet into tennis or two feet out,” she said.
The seven-time Wimbledon champion admitted that balancing being a woman and a pro athlete has presented her with somewhat of an ultimatum when it comes to big life decisions.
"Believe me, I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family. I don’t think it’s fair. 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 candidly penned.
With her last grand slam event in view, Williams admits that hanging up her racket is not something she necessarily wants to do. “There is no happiness in this topic for me. I know it’s not the usual thing to say, but I feel a great deal of pain,” she shared. “It’s the hardest thing that I could ever imagine. I hate it. I hate that I have to be at this crossroads."
Though it is difficult moving into a new season of life, she finds solace in the fact that she'll be giving herself to something else she loves. "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," she wrote. "A few years ago I quietly started Serena Ventures, a venture capital firm. Soon after that, I started a family. I want to grow that family."
"These days, if I have to choose between building my tennis résumé and building my family, I choose the latter,” she continued in the personal essay, later adding, “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.”
Williams won her first match in over a year on Monday at the National Open in Toronto. “I'm just happy to get a win. It's been a very long time, I forgot what that felt like,” she said.
Enjoying an exemplary career spanning over two decades, the history-maker has won 23 Grand Slam singles events, ranging from 1999 at age 17 to 2017. Her wins included seven Australian Opens, three French Opens, seven Wimbledons, and six U.S. Opens.
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