Williams, Serena

Impact on the world

Won 23 Grand Slam singles titles, the most of any woman in the Open Era (since 1968) and second-most all time, completed two 'Serena Slams' by holding all four major titles simultaneously, and won four Olympic gold medals; in 2017 she won the Australian Open while pregnant with her first child, becoming the most decorated American female tennis player and a transformative figure in the sport's history and culture.

Life & background

Born in Saginaw, Michigan and raised in Compton, California, Williams was homeschooled and trained intensively by her parents, Richard Williams and Oracene Price, from age three. She won her first Grand Slam, the 1999 U.S. Open, at 17, and went on to complete a career Grand Slam by 2003. In 2002, she became the first Black female athlete to be featured on the cover of Vogue a decade later in 2012, and pushed back against tennis's traditionally conservative dress codes with bold on-court fashion. She held the world No. 1 ranking for 319 total weeks, the third-most in WTA history, and won four Olympic gold medals, completing the career Golden Slam in singles. After a difficult childbirth in 2017 involving a near-fatal pulmonary embolism, she became an advocate for maternal health and for tennis players' rights after childbirth, leading the WTA to adopt a new ranking-protection rule. She announced her 'evolution' away from professional tennis in 2022, having also built ventures including the venture capital firm Serena Ventures and two secondary schools she founded in Kenya. Together with her sister, she is credited with ushering in a new era of power and athleticism in women's professional tennis, helping open the historically white, country-club sport to a more multicultural audience despite facing open racist hostility, including a notorious 2001 incident at Indian Wells that led both sisters to boycott the tournament for over a decade. As a doubles pairing, the sisters remain unbeaten in major doubles finals, having won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles and three Olympic gold medals together, and in 2018 they co-founded the Yetunde Price Resource Center in Compton, named for their half-sister who was murdered in 2003, to provide mental health and violence-recovery services to their home community.

Sources

1. Encyclopædia Britannica; National Women's History Museum