Serena Williams announced her forthcoming retirement on Tuesday but even when her illustrious tennis career comes to a close her impact on the game she dominated for over two decades will be felt for generations to come.
Williams, who made her professional debut in 1995 a year after her older sister Venus, has been one of the gameโs most marketable stars. She has a slew of corporate partners and in 2019 became the first athlete to land on Forbesโ list of Americaโs richest self-made women.
The 40-year-old Williams, who is playing a U.S. Open tune-up event this week in Toronto, said in a Vogue article that she is โevolving away from tennisโ and added in an Instagram post that โthe countdown has begun.โ
Comparing players from different generations is somewhat of a lost cause given the countless ways to appraise achievements and analyse data but Williams is considered by many fans and pundits as the โGOATโ โ a label that refers to the โGreatest Of All Timeโ.
Williams revolutionised womenโs tennis with a lethal mix of powerful serves, groundstrokes and superb athleticism and became the most successful player in the Open Era by collecting 23 Grand Slam titles, the most recent coming in 2017.
That success also inspired a generation of tennis players, including Naomi Osaka who beat Williams in the 2018 U.S. Open final to claim the first of her four majors and remembers watching her childhood idol.
โWhen I was younger, the family event would be watching Serena and Venus,โ Osaka, who has Japanese and Haitian parents, said last week at a tournament in San Jose.
โSo when I was watching that, that pushed me a lot. I never got to watch them play live, in a match, but Iโve gotten to watch their practices. Seeing that, seeing people that look like me, itโs definitely inspiring.โ
WOMENโS RIGHTS
Throughout her career, Williams has been outspoken about the culture of racism that she and her family, including Venus, were subjected to within a predominantly white sport.
At the peak of her career, Williams began what amounted to a 14-year boycott of a marquee tennis tournament in Indian Wells, California, after suffering racist jeers there in 2001, an incident which she said left her crying in the locker room for hours.
In 2018, she accused officials of allowing a culture of sexism to run rampant in the sport, with women players being penalised for things that her male counterparts would never be punished for.
After being handed a series of code violations during the U.S. Open final defeat by Osaka, Williams was particularly upset when she was docked a game for verbal abuse after telling the umpire he was โa thiefโ for stealing a point off her for a previous infringement.
โIโm here fighting for womenโs rights and for womenโs equalityโฆ. heโs never taken a game from a man because they said โthiefโ,โ Williams said at the time.
Tennis pioneer Billie Jean King was among many who praised her for exposing the โdouble standardโ that exists towards female players.
โIn this society, women are not taught or expected to be that future leader or future CEO,โ Williams told British Vogue in 2020. โThe narrative has to change. And maybe it doesnโt get better in time for me, but someone in my position can show women and people of colour that we have a voice because lord knows I use mine.
โI love sticking up for people and supporting women. Being the voice that millions of people donโt have.โ
Williams also pushed the boundaries of fashion on the tennis court, perhaps most notably at the 2018 French Open when she took the court wearing a skin-tight black catsuit with a red waistband โ which she said helped her to cope with blood clots that threatened her life when she gave birth to her daughter just months earlier.
The thought of women players turning up in such unconventional tennis attire, however, ruffled the Roland Garros establishment who then banned such outfits from the Paris major.
Author Howard Bryant, who wrote โThe Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism,โ said in a report on tennis.com that Williamsโ career will be seen as a dividing line when it comes to how women and Black athletes are talked about.
โWith her standing, and her empire, sheโs created a counter-voice and a new perspective,โ Bryant said in the report.
โItโs changed how we scrutinize behaviour. You canโt just gang up on her or make off-handed comments about her body. She has the stature of any great male athlete.
โIn 100 years, if we ask, when did that shift happen, weโll come back to Serena.โ
Thinking too much about 24th Slam didnโt help, says Serena
