How to measure the GOAT. Serena Williams did not surpass Margaret Court’s 24 Grand Slam titles and by that metric, with 23 big singles wins, she falls one short (unless she is an unlikely winner of the upcoming US Open). But along the way the black tennis player from the Los Angeles ghetto made herself the most significant and best tennis player of the professional era.
As ever this week Williams said what she needed to say in her own words, on a platform of her choice and in her own time, not explicitly but clearly that she will not be seen again as a serious competitor after the US Open. Starting in a few weeks and running into September, her home “Slam” is to be her last in a career that kicked to life 26 years ago as a 14-year-old teenager.
“Maybe the best word to describe what I’m up to is evolution. I’m here to tell you that I’m evolving away from tennis towards other things,” she told Vogue magazine, explaining the word “retirement” is not one she has come to love. That she chose Vogue, a fashion, not a tennis magazine pointed to where her future might take her in the “what next” phase of her life.
Williams has always unashamedly been many things. In 2009, she became a minority owner of the Miami Dolphins after purchasing a small stake in the team. She and her sister Venus were the first black women to hold any amount of ownership in an NFL franchise.
She is also a part owner of women’s football club Angel City, which plays in the National Women’s Soccer League and was involved in a bid to buy Chelsea Football Club when Russian oligarch Roman Abramovic was forced to divest following the invasion of Ukraine.
But at 40-years-old bringing her career to a close comes as no great surprise following July’s efforts on Wimbledon’s Centre Court. Williams, who had not competed in singles on tour since withdrawing from the tournament last year in tears with a hamstring injury, lost in three sets to Harmony Tan of France in the first round. Exactly. Harmony who? It was the 21st time that Williams had played Wimbledon. It was Tan’s first visit.
“I can’t change time or anything,” she said after the match more philosophical and less striking out as she often was at the height of her sometimes fiery career.
Williams burst on to the tennis scene with sister Venus in the 1990s, arriving with coloured braids in her hair and the grin of an assassin. Theirs was a colourful arrival with a new level of power game and freighted with a fearless attitude. The unveiled threat was that they were not there for laughs but to take over.
It was older sister Venus who first worked her way to the top as younger Serena followed. Father Richard, a big eccentric and friendly man, who would wander around stadiums and talk to total strangers about his daughters, rarely failed to tell the world that if Venus wowed the tennis cosmos with her outsized play watch out for the feistier and more competitive Serena coming down the tracks. She had already shown the appetite for a fight.
Her parents had wanted Serena to wait until she was a 16-year-old to play in professional tournaments. But in 1995 after turning 14, all she could see was forwards. Planning to make her professional debut as a wild-card entry in a tournament in Oakland, California, she was denied by the WTA owing to their age-eligibility restrictions.
So, she filed an antitrust lawsuit against the women’s tour, although withdrew it at her parents’ request. Her first professional event was later that year in October 1995, where she used a wild-card entry to circumvent age-eligibility rules.
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Her career then spun out like a movie script with the simple narrative of two girls from an LA ghetto who took over the privileged world of a country club sport. Then, of course, life became art in a movie last year with King Richard, starring Will Smith as Richard Williams.
The first black family of tennis didn’t disappoint with the pair winning a total of 30 Grand Slam titles in singles and teaming up for 14 doubles titles. Seven of Serena’s singles titles were at Wimbledon, the last one arriving in 2016 with her last Grand Slam win in Australia a year later. There were also four Olympic gold medals.
“Believe me, I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family. I don’t think it’s fair. If I were a guy, I wouldn’t be writing this because I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labour of expanding our family,” Williams told Vogue.
“Maybe I’d be more of a Tom Brady if I had that opportunity. Don’t get me wrong: I love being a woman, and I loved every second of being pregnant with Olympia. I was one of those annoying women who adored being pregnant and was working until the day I had to report to the hospital — although things got super complicated on the other side. These days, if I have to choose between building my tennis resume and building my family, I choose the latter.
“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. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want that record. Obviously I do. But day to day, I’m really not thinking about her. If I’m in a grand slam final, then yes, I am thinking about that record. Maybe I thought about it too much, and that didn’t help.”
Williams took the athleticism of Martina Navratilova and Steffi Graf and married it with a perfect physique for delivering the ball at higher speeds than any other player and to that package added desire and fight. She fought for everything she ever achieved with middle age now the only opponent that has beaten her.
She will be remembered for every diva hissy fit and there were many. Those also came with a humane side and a God-fearing Jehovah’s Witness sense of what was just. She both threatened to stuff a tennis ball down a line judge’s throat in 2009 and used her high profile to push for equal pay with men.
“The way I see it, I should have had 30-plus grand slams,” she said. “I had my chances after coming back from giving birth. I went from a C-section to a second pulmonary embolism to a grand slam final. I played while breastfeeding. I played through post-partum depression. But I didn’t get there. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. I didn’t show up the way I should have or could have. But I showed up 23 times, and that’s fine.”
Her legacy will be a player who was untouchable at her best and a personality that shaped culture with her seamless movement between issues of sport and race and gender. She faced them all as she did the person on the other side of the net, intending to win. With the departure of its most recognisable face, its strongest character, its main energy source and its biggest draw for the last two decades, tennis now has a new challenge.
