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Serena Williams introduced her retirement from tennis on Tuesday in an emotional essay reflecting on her unparalleled achievements in a sport she has dominated for almost three a long time.
Writing in a canopy story for the September situation of Vogue, Williams stated she would lastly put down the racket to deal with different passions together with her household and her enterprise empire.
“I’m right here to let you know that I’m evolving away from tennis, towards different issues which can be vital to me,” she wrote. “Just a few years in the past I quietly began Serena Ventures, a enterprise capital agency. Quickly after that, I began a household. I need to develop that household.” Williams remains to be set to compete within the U.S. Open, which begins in New York Metropolis later this month.
Williams, 40, whose highly effective taking part in type noticed her obliterate opponents on her approach to a mind-boggling 23 Grand Slam singles titles, confessed that she didn't need to have to decide on between tennis and her household.
“I don’t suppose it’s truthful,” she wrote. “If I had been a man, I wouldn’t be scripting this as a result of I’d be on the market taking part in and profitable whereas my spouse was doing the bodily labor of increasing our household. Possibly I’d be extra of a Tom Brady if I had that chance.”
Williams added that she’d be mendacity if she stated she didn’t need to surpass Margaret Courtroom’s file of 24 Grand Slam titles—set earlier than the fashionable “open period” of the game—however accepted that her personal achievements had been “extraordinary.”
“[I]f I've to decide on between constructing my tennis résumé and constructing my household, I select the latter,” she wrote.
Williams’ announcement comes after she made a return to singles tennis at Wimbledon in June after an extended interval being sidelined as a result of damage. The hiatus led some to take a position that Williams’ retirement may very well be on the playing cards; her defeat within the first spherical of the U.Ok. event solely bolstered the rumors.
“Sadly I wasn’t able to win Wimbledon this yr,” Williams wrote within the Vogue essay. “And I don’t know if I can be able to win New York. However I’m going to attempt.”
She additionally stated that encouragement from her pal Tiger Woods had helped her return to competing in tennis professionally this yr.
Williams additionally paid tribute to her sister, Venus Williams, for uplifting her to develop into the world-beating athlete that she finally grew to become. “[I]f I hadn’t been in Venus’s shadow,” Williams wrote, “I'd by no means be who I'm. When somebody stated I used to be simply the little sister, that’s after I received actually fired up.”
Williams went on to disclose that she and her husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, have been attempting for a second youngster. Their daughter, Olympia, was born in 2017. “I positively don’t need to be pregnant once more as an athlete,” Williams wrote. “I must be two toes into tennis or two toes out.” Williams says her focus has additionally steadily shifted in the direction of her enterprise capital firm, which has primarily funded corporations created by girls and other people of coloration.
Regardless of profitable nearly each accolade her sport has to offer—together with almost $100 million in prize cash—Williams stated the choice to retire remains to be painful to contemplate all the identical. “I don’t know the way I’m going to have the ability to have a look at this journal when it comes out,” she wrote. “Realizing that that is it, the top of a narrative that began in Compton, California, with somewhat Black lady who simply needed to play tennis.”