Serena’s career changed how we view women
Even when you can see it coming, it always hurts a little to see a spectacular athletic career come to an end.
Serena Williams, in announcing in Vogue magazine that she is planning to “evolve” away from tennis after next month’s U.S. Open, said that every time she has tried to discuss the end of her career, she gets a lump in her throat and starts to cry.
We might, too.
The greatest women’s tennis player of all time and one of the greatest athletes we will ever have the opportunity to watch, will leave a tremendous, untouchable legacy.
Not just the 23 Grand Slam titles.
Not just the record $94 million in on-court winnings. Or the $260 million in net worth, the most financially successful female athlete of all time.
But the way she changed our world.
She and her older sister Venus changed the story of who could play tennis, of how they could play tennis, of where they had to come from to succeed in the game.
Serena Williams changed how we view women athletes. Which means she changed how we view women.
Women could be unapologetically powerful and strong. They could get angry in their workplace. They could be ruthless. They could be fashion icons. They could be activists. They could be mothers. They could be all of those things at the same time.
Williams changed how we view motherhood. She made it clear in her “as told to” Vogue essay, that she is stepping away from tennis because she wants to expand her family. Her daughter, Olympia, is almost 5 and wants to be a big sister. Williams, who is the youngest
of five sisters, and her husband, Alexis Ohanian, wants to make that happen. She wrote, “I’m turning 41 (in September), and something’s got to give.”
Williams noted that she doesn’t really feel that’s fair. If she was a guy, she wouldn’t have to choose between extending her career or growing her family.
“Maybe I’d be more of a Tom Brady if I had that opportunity,” she wrote.
But she “definitely (doesn’t) want to be pregnant again as an athlete. I need to be two feet into tennis or two feet out.”
Williams won her last Grand Slam in Melbourne in 2017 when she was two months’ pregnant. After a difficult delivery, in which
she had a C-section and a pulmonary embolism that almost killed her, she reached the finals of two more Grand Slams in 2018 and again in 2019. But she hasn’t won another Slam since having Olympia.
“There are people who say I’m not the GOAT because I didn’t pass Margaret Court’s record of 24 grand slam titles, which she achieved before the ‘open era’ that began in 1968,” Williams wrote. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want that record. Obviously, I do. … But I showed up 23 times and that’s fine. Actually, it’s extraordinary.”
Anyone who wants to bicker about Williams’ GOAT status is going to lose the argument. As Williams notes, her career has
been extraordinary.
Nothing about Williams is ordinary.
She is heavily involved in her venture capital company, Serena Ventures. When she learned a few years ago, that only 2% of venture capital went to women, she couldn’t believe it.
“I kind of understood then and there that someone who looks like me needs to start writing the big checks,” she wrote.
Williams credits Venus — who is 15 months older — for her success, as she followed in her footsteps, watched her career. But no one would ever confuse the two players.
“Unlike Venus, who’s always been stoic and classy, I’ve never been one to contain my emotions,” Serena wrote. “There were so many matches I won because something made me angry, or someone counted me out. That drove me. I’ve built a career on channeling anger and negativity and turning it into something good.”
That trait also changed the stereotypes of female athletes and how they were supposed to behave.
“I’d like to think that thanks to opportunities afforded to me, women athletes feel that they can be themselves on the court,” Williams wrote. “They can play with aggression and pump their fists. They can be strong yet beautiful. They can wear what they want and say what they want and kick butt and be proud of it all.”
Williams’ career ends as a golden era in tennis is coming to a close. It seems unlikely we will see Roger Federer in another Grand Slam final. Rafael Nadal has acknowledged the end is near. Venus hasn’t made a Grand Slam final since 2017 and has lost both her opening round matches this month in pre-U.S. Open tournaments. The GOATs are heading out the door.
Serena, who won her first match in more than 15 months on Monday in Toronto, said she is not “looking for some ceremonial, final on-court moment.”
But the rest of us are. The woman whose life and journey were worthy of a Hollywood movie (on which she happened to be an executive producer) deserves a fairy-tale ending.
“This is it,” she wrote. “The end of a story that started in Compton, California, with a little Black girl who just wanted to play tennis.”
Williams’ career will end, appropriately for a woman who also changed the game and the history of women, at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.
There will be tears.