Serena Williams is one of the best athletes in history. She is a professional tennis player, renowned for her great physical and mental strength, and for her powerful strokes.
She has won a total of 39 Grand Slam titles, 73 WTA titles, and 4 gold medals at the Olympic Games , among other awards. In addition, she is the only tennis player to have completed the Golden Slam career in both modalities (singles and doubles).
Serena Williams Biography
Success and triumphs are the common denominator in the career of the American, however, defeats and failures have also been present in her life. Not everything has been rosy. Serena had to fight since she was a child to fulfill her dream and make a place for herself in the world of tennis. Family tragedies and her fight against racism made her stronger. Her story is that of a true champion.
Serena Jameka Williams Price was born in Saginaw, Michigan on September 26, 1981. She is the daughter of Richard Williams and Oracene Price and is the youngest of 5 sisters: Yetunde, Isha, Lyndrea and Venus . As children they all lived in Compton, a suburb of Los Angeles, in a humble house. The place brings back bitter memories, because on the morning of September 14, 2003, her older sister (Yetunde) was killed when she was walking through the neighborhood with a friend.
The tragic death of the older sister brought the Williams family closer together. That was how Richard became the first coach of his daughters. Venus and Serena were taken by their father to the public tennis courts to practice.
When Serena was 4 years old she won her first tournament and before she turned 10, she had already participated in 49 tournaments and won 46 of them. At one point, she replaced her sister Venus de Ella as the No. 1 player under 12 in California.
In 1991 Richard Williams, saying he hoped to protect his daughters from racism, stopped sending them to national “junior” tennis tournaments and Serena began attending a tennis school run by professional player Ric Micci . Soon Richard, who had made a deal on his daughters’ behalf with a major clothing company, was able to move the rest of the family to West Palm Beach, Florida, to be near Serena and Venus.
Serena Williams Career
Serena turned pro in September 1995, at age 14 . Due to her age she was not allowed to play in tournaments sponsored by the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA). Her first professional participation was the Bell Challenge in Quebec, in which she was defeated in less than 1 hour of play; Of course she didn’t give up and then she started winning matches. She continued to play, but did not find much success until 1997, when she jumped from 453 to 304 in the world rankings .
That year she beat world number 2 and number 5, Monica Seles and Mary Pierce respectively, at the Ameritech Open in Chicago; although in the semifinals she was defeated by world number 3, Lindsay Davenport . That year she finished inside the top 100, at number 99.
Serena’s Williams FIRST TITLES IN TENNIS
In 1998 Serena Williams won her first titles as a professional. She did it together with Belarusian Max Mirnyi , with whom she triumphed at the Wimbledon Grand Slam and the US Open. In the doubles category, she with her sister Venus she won the titles of Oklahoma and Zurich.
The following year, after defeating world number 2 and number 7 Serena faced Amélie Mauresmo (number 6) to win the Paris tournament on the same day that Venus won the Oklahoma tournament; In this way they became the first sisters in the history of professional tennis to win two titles in the same week.
At just 17 years old, the American won 5 titles (Paris, Indian Wells, Manhattan Beach, US Open and the Grand Slam Cup). She thus became the first African – American winner since Althea Gibson in 1958 .
As if that were not enough, she was also proclaimed the winner of the doubles along with her sister Venus with whom she had also won the doubles at Roland Garros and the Hamburg tournament that year. At the end of the season she had risen to number 4 in the world ranking.
In 2000, a couple of injuries cut short his progress and she was only able to play 11 tournaments all season. Despite this, Serena Williams won the gold medal in the doubles at the 2000 Sydney Olympics with her sister Venus de Ella. That year she also triumphed in the Princess Cup tournament in Tokyo and in Hannover.
SERENA WILLIAMS BEST MOMENT
In 2001 she added a couple more trophies to her cabinet, but what she did in 2002 was something amazing. That has been without a doubt Serena’s best year on the WTA tour. In the season she won 3 Grand Slams in a row: Roland Garros, Wimbledon and the US Open.
In addition, she won 8 of the 11 tournaments she entered, being a finalist in another two, with a balance of 56 wins and only 5 losses, and became number 1 in the world for 57 consecutive weeks . In the doubles category she won with her sister Venus for the second time the Wimbledon title in addition to winning, on that occasion with Alexandra Stevenson in Leipzig.
Her streak continued in 2003. She started the year triumphing at the Australian Open, thus achieving the 4 Grand Slams in a row; she becoming the seventh player in history to achieve it . But it wasn’t just her singles title, she also won the doubles with her sister.
However, in 2004 the damn injuries reappeared. Due to knee discomfort, she was unable to participate in several tournaments, including the 2004 Athens Olympics . It was a difficult year, in which he was out of the circuit for 8 months and failed to win any Grand Slam, although he added two more titles to his record.
The year 2005 began as the previous one had ended, with the rumor that Serena was more dedicated to her love of fashion than to her training. But the youngest of the Williams resurfaced by winning her seventh Grand Slam title and becoming the active player with the most Grand Slams.
Serena Williams APPEARANCE OF LESSONS
The joy was short-lived, after that title the injuries and her other hobbies took her away from the tracks, or at least at the high level she was used to.
Unfortunately, her bad moment lasted until 2006. That year she only played four tournaments, so rumors arose again about the American being tired of tennis, which she denied. As if the attacks of the press were not enough, for the first time in years Serena Williams left the top-50 of the world ranking .
She reappeared in 2007 declaring that she was still up for great things and that he would return to the top. However, that year he also had many difficulties due to injuries and the racist insults he received in several games. Despite this, he remained firm in his desire to shine again and he succeeded. She won several titles, including the gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics doubles tournament .
But, once again, the injuries reappeared and frustrated their goals. Between 2009 and 2010 he had to fight stronger opponents and an injury from stepping on broken glass in a restaurant . Even so, she got her thirteenth Grand Slam and was placed as the sixth tennis player with the most titles in history.
Although, her true resurgence occurred in 2012. The American was the player who won the most titles during the year. Her last tournament of the season was the WTA Championships in Istanbul, Turkey. She did not lose any sets during the event. She won this tournament for the third time and, at 31 years old, she became the oldest player to win it.
Serena Williams TROPHIES AND MEDALS
That season he also claimed two gold medals at the 2012 London Olympics . She came first in the singles and doubles tournament.
Between 2013 and 2016 he added a couple more trophies to his showcases. And in 2017 he surprised the world again with his achievements. On January 28, Serena Williams won the Australian Open for the seventh time (an Open Era record) defeating her sister, Venus. This was her 23rd Grand Slam singles title, surpassing Steffi Graf’s record of 22 won . It was the first time in the Open Era that two players aged 35 or older had played in the final of a Grand Slam tournament.
The victory guaranteed his return to number one in the world. However, on April 20, she revealed that she was 20 weeks pregnant, and would miss the rest of the season. The times mean that she would have been approximately eight weeks pregnant when she triumphed in Australia.
Although it was in 2016 that she won her last Doubles Grand Slam (at Wimbledon) and in 2017 her last individual Grand Slam (at the Australian Open), the American has not yet announced her retirement from professional tennis . Moreover, this year she participated in the Wimbledon Championships. She played in the first round against Belarusian Aliaksandra Sasnovich , but she retired in the first set with an ailment that left her on the verge of tears.
Many assure that these images will be the last we will see of Serena on a tennis court, since she is already 40 years old. However, she is the best player in history and has earned the right to put an end to it when she wants, and not when someone tells her to.
Serena Williams Net Worth
Serena Williams is a billionaire tennis star with an estimated fortune of $250 million. In the eyes of many, she is one of the greatest tennis players to ever walk the court. By a wide margin, she is the highest paid female player.
With her on-court earnings and endorsements, Serena has been able to earn an average of $30 to $40 million a year in the recent past. Serena, for example, earned $35 million between June 2019 and June 2020, about $20 million of which came from endorsements, according to Forbes.
Serena Williams Private Life
She has been married to tech entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian since November 2017. They met at the Cavalieri Hilton hotel in Rome in 2015 while she was in town for a tournament and he was giving a lecture. They kept most of their romance away from the cameras. So much so that until they announced their engagement at the end of 2016, their relationship went unnoticed.
Their daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr, was born in September 2017 and two months later her parents said “I do” at the Center for Contemporary Art, with the theme of the movie Beauty and the Beast . The link, although intimate, was attended by such important characters as Beyoncé, Jay Z, Kim Kardashian, Eva Longoria or Anna Wintour. The cost of the wedding was estimated at almost a million dollars.
