What will the greatest player in women’s tennis do next?
Serena Williams is the greatest female tennis player of all time, but that hardly captures her impact. Even calling her one of the most dominant athletes in history feels confining. She and her sister Venus represent one of the most improbable success stories in American history. But that also doesn’t capture the implausibility of two little Black girls from Compton, California, rising to become the top tennis players in the world.
So if her first-round U.S. Open match with Danka Kovinic tonight is indeed her last match ever at the Open (or if this is her last tournament appearance, period) Williams can retire knowing that words cannot fully describe what she’s meant for the sport, for women—especially Black women—and for American culture. Think of how Alvin Ailey remade modern dance in his own image. Williams has done the same for tennis. An entire generation of women witnessed Williams unapologetically transforming everything within her reach.
Williams indicated in a first-person essay for Vogue a few weeks ago that she is planning on moving away from tennis following this year’s U.S. Open. In her essay, Williams insisted that she is not retiring. Instead, she said, she is evolving.
“I have never liked the word retirement,” Williams wrote. “It doesn’t feel like a modern word to me. I’ve been thinking of this as a transition, but I want to be sensitive about how I use that word, which means something very specific and important to a community of people. Maybe the best word to describe what I’m up to is evolution.”
Williams’s passion for her sport appears to be as vibrant as it was when she began her professional career at 14 years old, but in the past two years, injuries and age have overruled her desire to play. A torn hamstring suffered at Wimbledon in 2021 kept her off the court for almost a year. In 2020, she withdrew from the French Open because of a lingering Achilles-tendon issue, which ultimately shut down her season. When she beat Nuria Parrizas-Diaz at the Canadian Open earlier this month, it was her first singles-match victory in 14 months.
As Williams approaches her 41st birthday, in September, she seems to have concluded that tennis’s demands are running counter to the other plans she has for her life.
