Serena Williams seems to be preparing to retire from competitive tennis for good.
In an editorial for Vogue that was published on Tuesday, the great athlete, who has won innumerable trophies, including 23 Grand Slams, throughout a playing career that has lasted over three decades, revealed that she expects to retire after the 2019 U.S. Open.
Williams, 40, is presently competing at the Canadian Open, where she earlier this week won her first singles match in a little more than a year.
On Wednesday, she will play another match there.
Williams has recently focused more on endeavours outside of tennis while still competing against the best athletes in the world at events like Wimbledon and the French Open from a year ago.
She said in her most recent piece that “growing away from tennis” will allow her to focus more on other things.
“Retirement has never been a term I’ve loved.
It doesn’t strike me as a contemporary term. Although I’ve been thinking of this as a transition, I want to be careful how I use that term since it has a very distinct and significant meaning to a group of people “She composed.
“Perhaps the simplest way to sum up what I’m doing is to call it evolutionary.
I’m here to let you know that I’m moving away from tennis and toward other priorities.”
She listed Serena Ventures, a venture capital company she founded some years ago, as one of her goals.
The second is her family and the desire to expand it via a second pregnancy with her husband Alexis Ohanian. Alexis Olympia, their daughter, is now 4 years old.
She wrote, “I want to expand that family.
She began the article with a story about how she overheard Olympia responding to an automated inquiry that was asked of her via a mobile app that was interactive.
Williams remembers her daughter murmuring, “I want to be a big sister” when the robot voice asked her what she’d want to be when she grows up – something she allegedly expresses “a lot” recently.
Serena Williams has been a dominant force in tennis since the mid-1990s, when she first turned pro as a teenager.
She has won 23 Grand Slam singles championships and spent 186 consecutive weeks at the top of the world rankings list.
She is often referred to as the G.O.A.T., or the Greatest of All Time, by tennis enthusiasts today.
The critically praised movie “King Richard,” which was released last year, focused on her and her sister Venus Williams’ shared rise to fame.
Williams admitted in the article published on Tuesday that juggling motherhood and a successful tennis career presented unique difficulties for women.
“Never in my life did I want to have to decide between having a family and playing tennis. It’s not fair, in my opinion “She spoke.
“If I were a male, my wife would be doing the physical work of growing our family while I would be out there playing and winning.
Maybe if I had the chance, I’d be more like Tom Brady.”
Don’t misunderstand me, I adore being a woman, and I cherished every minute of carrying Olympia,” Williams said.
Even if things became quite tough on the other side, I was one of those irritating ladies who loved being pregnant and worked up until the day I had to go to the hospital.
Williams previously discussed the serious health issues she encountered following the birth of her baby in a personal essay for Elle that was published last spring and described the close call with death.
But before that, Williams “nearly did perform the impossible,” as she said in Vogue.
Many people are unaware that she was expecting her second child at the time she won the Australian Open in 2017.
But something has to give since I’ll be 41 this month.
Williams acknowledged that the choice to “move on” from tennis was a good one for some of her friends and other tennis winners, such as Caroline Wozniacki and Ashleigh Barty, but she highlighted that accepting her own next phase has been challenging.
She remarked, “I haven’t wanted to confess to myself or anybody else that I had to stop playing tennis.”
“My husband, Alexis, and I have scarcely ever discussed it;
it’s almost like a taboo subject. With my parents, I can’t even have this topic.
It’s as though something is only real when said aloud.
When it does, I have a strange knot in my throat and begin to weep.”
Williams is conscious of both her prospects at winning one last Grand Slam championship and of her status as a sports pioneer and legend.
“I’m not sure whether I’ll be prepared to win in New York.
But I’ll make an effort “She composed.
In her last statement in the Vogue piece, Williams expressed her desire for her legacy to include more than just her tennis career-related accomplishments.
She stated, “Over the years, I hope that people start to see me as a symbol of something more than tennis.
“Billie Jean [King] is someone I respect because she went beyond her sport.
Serena is this, she is that, she was a fantastic tennis player, and she won those grand slams, is how I would want it to read.”