Serena Williams Biography: Age, Sisters, Husband, Profile, Family, Parents, Son, Daughter, Net Worth, Father, Wikipedia
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Serena Williams Biography
Serena Jameka Williams (born September 26, 1981) is an American retired professional tennis player.
She was ranked world No. 1 in singles by the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) for 319 weeks, including a joint-record 186 consecutive weeks, and finished as the year-end No. 1 five times.
Serena Williams won 23 Grand Slam singles titles, the most by any player in the Open Era, and the second-most of all time.
Early Life and Education
Serena Williams was born on September 26, 1981, in Saginaw, Michigan to Oracene Price and Richard Williams. She is the youngest of Price’s five daughters: half-sisters Yetunde, Lyndrea, and Isha Price, and full older sister Venus.
She also has at least seven paternal half-siblings. When the children were young, the family moved to Compton, California, where she started playing tennis at age four. Her father home-schooled her and her sister, Venus.
While he and subsequently her mother have been their official coaches, her other mentors have included Richard Williams, a Compton man who shared her father’s name and subsequently founded The Venus and Serena Williams Tennis Tutorial Academy.
When Serena Williams was nine, she and her family moved from Compton to West Palm Beach, Florida so she could attend the tennis academy of Rick Macci, who provided her with additional coaching.
Macci did not always agree with Williams’s father, but respected that “he treated his daughters like kids, allowed them to be little girls”.
Richard stopped sending his daughters to national junior tennis tournaments when Williams was 10, as he wanted them to “go slowly” and focus on school work.
Experiences of racism also influenced this decision, as he had heard white parents talk about the Williams sisters in a derogatory manner during tournaments.
At that time, Williams had a 46–3 record on the United States Tennis Association junior tour and was ranked number one among under-10 players in Florida.
In 1995, when Williams was in the ninth grade, her father pulled his daughters out of Macci’s academy and took over all coaching at their home.
When asked in 2000 whether it would have been more beneficial for them to have followed the normal path of playing regularly on the junior circuit, Williams responded, “Everyone does different things. I think for Venus and I, we just attempted a different road, and it worked for us.”
Serena Williams Career
Serena Williams won her first singles title as a mother at the 2020 ASB Classic, defeating Jessica Pegula in the final.
She also reached the finals in the doubles tournament with Caroline Wozniacki; the pair were defeated by Asia Muhammad and Taylor Townsend.
Hence, she became the first woman in the professional era with at least one title in four decades: the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s.
Serena Williams next tournament was the 2020 Australian Open where she was seeded 8th. She defeated Anastasia Potapova and Tamara Zidanšek in the first and second rounds respectively in straight sets, before falling to Wang Qiang in three tight sets in the third round.
On the resumption of the WTA Tour following a pause caused by COVID-19, Williams entered the Top Seed Open as the top seed.
Following a tough three-set win over Bernarda Pera in the first round, Williams faced her sister Venus for their 31st WTA match in the second round and came through after dropping the first set.
Serena Williams went on to suffer a shock defeat in the quarter finals to fellow American Shelby Rogers.
At the Cincinnati Open, played in New York, Williams received a bye in the first round, beat Arantxa Rus in the second, and lost to Maria Sakkari in three sets in the third round.
Serena Williams was seeded 3rd at the second major of the year, the 2020 US Open. After two straight sets victories to begin with, Williams faced former grand slam champion Sloane Stephens in the third round, winning in three sets. In the fourth round, Williams avenged her loss to Sakkari in the previous tournament.
In the quarter-finals, she defeated Tsvetana Pironkova of Bulgaria who was playing in her first tournament in three years after giving birth. She thus advanced into the semifinals, where she faced Victoria Azarenka, losing in three sets.
Her match with Azarenka marked the first time two mothers met in a Grand Slam semi-final.
She also became the first player in history to reach the semifinals of Grand slam and US Open in four decades: the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s.
Serena Williams was seeded 6th at the delayed 2020 French Open held in cold and heavy conditions in October.
After defeating Kristie Ahn in straight sets in the first round, Williams withdrew before her second round match against wildcard Tsvetana Pironkova, citing an achilles injury she had sustained during her semi-final defeat to Azarenka at the US Open.
This meant for the first time since 2006, Serena Williams failed to reach a Grand Slam final.
Serena Williams started the year by playing the Yarra Valley Classic, where she withdrew prior to her semifinal match against the top seed, Ashleigh Barty citing a right shoulder injury.
In the Australian Open Serena Williams was seeded 10th and lost to the 4th seed, Naomi Osaka, in the semifinal after defeating 2nd seed, Simona Halep, and 7th seed, Aryna Sabalenka, along the way.
Serena Williams match with Osaka was the first time the two had met in a major since the infamous 2018 US Open final.
When leaving the court after losing to Osaka in the Australian Open, Williams paused to acknowledge the crowd longer than she usually would.
In the press conference following the match, she faced questions about whether she was bidding farewell to tennis and retiring. She said “I don’t know, if I ever say farewell, I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
In May, at the Italian Open, Serena Williams played her 1000th match of her career. She was defeated by Nadia Podoroska in the second round in straight sets.
On June 29, Serena Williams would suffer an injury during the first set in the first round at Wimbledon against Belarusian player Aliaksandra Sasnovich, forcing her to withdraw from the competition.
In August 2021, a leg injury forced Serena Williams to withdraw from the 2021 US Open. Her withdrawal saw Williams plummet nineteen places to 41st in the world, her lowest year-end ranking in 15 years.
In December 2021, Serena Williams announced she would not play the 2022 Australian Open, citing the same leg injury. As of March 2022, she was ranked 241st.
She spent much of early 2022 promoting King Richard about her father with her sisters. She appeared at several award ceremonies including the 94th Academy Awards.
Serena Williams returned to professional play in June 2022 when she partnered up with Ons Jabeur in the Eastbourne International.
The pairing beat Sara Sorribes Tormo and Marie Bouzková in the first round, and Shuko Aoyama and Chan Hao-ching in the second.
The pairing retired from the tournament afterwards owing to an injury sustained by Jabeur.
Serena Williams also entered the 2022 Wimbledon Championships in singles, having accepted a wildcard after dropping to 1204th in the singles rankings.
She lost to Harmony Tan in the first round in an over 3 hour match, the longest thus far at the tournament.
In August, Serena Williams wrote an article for Vogue, in which she announced her plans to ‘evolve away’ from tennis after the US Open, indicating retirement.
Serena Williams began her last matches by entering the 2022 Canadian Open, using a special ranking.
Serena Williams beat Nuria Párrizas Díaz in straight sets for her first singles win in 14 months, before losing to Belinda Bencic.
Serena Williams subsequently entered the 2022 Cincinnati Masters, in which she lost against 2021 US Open champion Emma Raducanu in the first round.
Before the tournament, Serena Williams announced she would once again play doubles with Venus for the first time since 2018 in likely their last tournament together.
Their first round match was the first time a first round doubles match would headline Primetime at the U.S. Open in Arthur Ashe Stadium. They lost in the first to the Czech duo of Lucie Hradecká and Linda Nosková.
Personal Life
Serena Williams is married to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. He proposed to her on December 10, 2016, in Rome. On December 30, 2016, Williams announced their engagement in a Reddit post.
They married on November 16, 2017, in New Orleans. Guests at the wedding included Beyoncé, Anna Wintour, Kelly Rowland and Kim Kardashian. She planned to move to San Francisco with Ohanian after the wedding.
On April 19, 2017, Serena Williams posted a sideways picture of herself on Snapchat that focused on her midsection; it had the caption, “20 weeks”, prompting speculation that she was pregnant. Later that evening, her spokesperson confirmed the pregnancy.
The fact that she was 20 weeks pregnant when announcing her pregnancy meant that she was eight weeks pregnant when she won the Australian Open earlier that year.
Serena Williams later said that posting the picture on Snapchat was an accident, and that she had intended to save the photo for her records.
In September 2017, Serena Williams gave birth to her daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr, who is often referred to as “Olympia”.
She had an emergency caesarean-section delivery due to the baby’s heart rate dropping during labor and was at first devastated about it.
She suffered a pulmonary embolism after giving birth, leaving her bedridden for six weeks and delaying her return to training.
(This encounter was not her first with the disease venous thromboembolism; she had been hospitalized in 2011 for pulmonary embolism thought to have originated from a deep vein thrombosis.) In August 2018, she revealed she was suffering from postpartum depression.
Serena Williams gave her daughter a doll, Qai Qai, that has become famous on social media.
She has also faced many questions whether she would raise her daughter to play tennis to which she answered saying she has already hired a coach for her daughter. She also posts many pictures of her and her daughter on the tennis court with rackets.
Serena Williams was raised a Jehovah’s Witness, but states she has “never really practiced it”. She often thanks Jehovah after winning matches.
Serena Williams confirmed that she follows some practices: “Olympia doesn’t celebrate birthdays. We’re Jehovah’s Witnesses, so we don’t do that.
Serena Williams’ current agent is former player Jill Smoller.
Serena Williams Net Worth
Serena Williams is an American retired professional tennis player. She has an estimated net worth of $100 millions.
