Serena Williams, the American tennis superstar, announced her retirement from professional tennis after the U.S. Open on Tuesday.
The 41-year-old Williams wrote a farewell to the game in a Vogue magazine essay published Tuesday morning.
According to reports, while not specifically saying the U.S. Open, which begins in Queens on Aug. 29, will be her final tournament, she wrote on Instagram promoting her piece: “I’m going to relish these next few weeks.”
Before her retirement revelation, Williams earned her first win in more than a year on Monday after beating Nuria Parrizas-Diaz 6-3, 6-4 at the National Bank Open, a tune-up event for the final slam of the season.
Before her latest win, her last tournament win was at the 2021 French Open.
I’m just happy to get a win. It’s been a very long time, I forgot what that felt like, “Williams said.
“I have never liked the word retirement,” Williams wrote in Vogue.
“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. I’m here to tell you that I’m evolving away from tennis toward other things that are important to me,” Williams added.
Williams explained that she decided to retire from professional tennis to raise her family and continue working with Serena Ventures, a venture capital firm she founded “a few years ago.”
“I definitely don’t want to be pregnant again as an athlete,” she said.
“I need to be two feet into tennis or two feet out,” she added.
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