“Thank you dad, I know you’re watching, thank you mom (who was present in the stands), thank you to all the people who have supported me all this time, my God it’s been decades“said Serena Williams, before totally bursting into tears when referring to her older sister:”I wouldn’t be Serena if it wasn’t for Venus, so thank you Venus“.
An extraordinary journey
Since her first professional encounter in Quebec City in 1995 (unranked, she had lost in the first round of qualifying), Serena Williams has pushed back the barriers of her sport, of which she has become the undisputed queen in 27 seasons… even if she has failed to a small unit of the record of titles in Grand Slams held by the Australian Margaret Court (24).
After her last major title (Australia 2017) and the birth a few months later of her daughter Olympia, from her marriage to the co-founder of the social network Reddit Alexis Ohanian, she played four more finals (Wimbledon and US Open 2018, Wimbledon and US Open 2019) without managing to win his Grail.
She then gradually moved away from the circuit. In recent years, she has only played a few tournaments a year with the Majors as a priority, devoting herself more and more, in addition to her role as mother, to her side activities, in particular in and around fashion, rather than to the tennis.
Absent from the circuit since her retirement from injury in the first round of Wimbledon 2021, she had made a surprise return this summer in the Major on grass where she was again eliminated in the first round. A few weeks later, after losing in the second round in Toronto and the first in Cincinnati, she therefore resolved to put away the rackets.
World N.1 for 319 weeks in total, more than six years (the first time on July 8, 2002, the last time the week of May 8, 2017), she was only ranked 605th on the evening of her retirement.