Serena Jameka Williams (born September 26, 1981) is a professional tennis player from the United States. The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) has ranked her as the world No. 1 in singles for 319 weeks, including a joint-record 186 consecutive weeks, and she has closed the year as the No. 1 five times. She holds the most Grand Slam singles titles of any woman in the Open Era and the second-most all-time (after Margaret Court’s 24).
Serena Williams was coached by her parents, Oracene Price and Richard Williams, along with her older sister Venus. She turned pro in 1995 and won her first major singles victory at the US Open in 1999. She was dominant from the 2002 French Open to the 2003 Australian Open, winning all four major singles titles (each time over Venus in the final) to complete the “Serena Slam,” a non-calendar year Grand Slam and a lifetime Grand Slam. She won two more singles titles during the next few years, but she was plagued by injury and a decrease in form. Despite recurrent injuries, she gradually recovered to form in 2007, reclaiming the world’s No. 1 singles ranking. Williams regained her supremacy at the 2012 Wimbledon Championships, winning Olympic gold and becoming the first tennis player to complete a Career Golden Slam in both singles and doubles. She won eight of thirteen singles majors, including a second “Serena Slam” in 2014–15 when she won all four in a row. She won her 23rd major singles title in the 2017 Australian Open, breaking Steffi Graf’s Open Era record. After being pregnant, she took a break from professional tennis and has since returned to reach four major finals.
Williams has also won 14 major women’s doubles titles, all with her sister Venus, and the duo has never lost in a Grand Slam final.
Between the 2009 Wimbledon Championships and the 2010 French Open, the sisters won a non-calendar year Grand Slam, which gave them the world No. 1 doubles ranking. She has four Olympic gold medals, three in women’s doubles, which she shares with her sister for the all-time record. In 1998, she also won two major mixed doubles titles.
Williams is largely regarded as one of the all-time great tennis players.
The Williams sisters’ entrance on the women’s professional tennis tour is regarded as ushering in a new era of power and athleticism. Serena Williams is the active player with the most major titles in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles, with 39: 23 in singles, 14 in women’s doubles, and two in mixed doubles. She is tied for third all-time and second in the Open Era in terms of total major titles. She is the most recent woman to hold all four major singles titles in the same calendar year (2002–03 and 2014–15), as well as the most recent woman to win the Surface Slam (major titles on hard, clay, and grass courts in the same calendar year), which she accomplished in 2015. She is also the most recent player to hold all four major women’s doubles titles at the same time (2009–10), alongside Venus.
In 2016, Williams was the highest-paid female athlete in the world, earning about $29 million.
With $27 million in prize money and endorsements, she replicated this achievement in 2017, when she was the only woman on Forbes’ list of the 100 highest-paid athletes. She has won the Laureus Sportswoman of the Year award four times (in 2003, 2010, 2016, and 2018), and Sports Illustrated magazine named her Sportsperson of the Year in December 2015. She was placed 28th on Forbes’ list of the World’s Highest-Paid Athletes in 2021.
She is the highest-paid female athlete in history.
Serena Williams Net Worth 2022
Serena Williams is a multi-time world champion tennis player with a net worth of $250 million. Many people see her as one of the greatest female tennis players of all time. She is by far the highest-paid female player.
Serena has earned $30–40 million in recent years through on-court revenue and endorsements. Serena earned $35 million between June 2019 and June 2020, with around $20 million coming from endorsements.
Early Life
Williams was born in Saginaw, Michigan, on September 26, 1981, to Oracene Price and Richard Williams. Price has five daughters: half-sisters Yetunde, Lyndrea, and Isha Price, as well as a full older sister Venus. There are at least seven paternal half-siblings in her family. The family moved to Compton, California, when the children were little, and she began playing tennis at the age of four. Her father taught her and her sister, Venus, at home. Richard Williams, a Compton man who shared her father’s name and went on to start The Venus and Serena Williams Tennis/Tutorial Academy, has been one of her other mentors.
In 1993, the Williams sisters attended a Pam Shriver event in Baltimore.
Williams and her family moved from Compton to West Palm Beach, Florida, when she was nine years old.
In order to attend Rick Macci’s tennis academy, where she received more coaching. Although Macci did not always agree with Williams’ father, he admired how “he treated his daughters as children, allowing them to be little girls.” When Williams was eleven years old, Richard stopped sending her to national junior tennis competitions because he wanted her to “progress gently” and concentrate on her studies. Racism had also influenced his decision since he had overheard white parents making disparaging remarks about the Williams sisters during competitions. Williams was ranked first among under-10 players in Florida at the time, with a 46–3 record on the United States Tennis Association junior tour. Williams’ father withdrew her girls out of Macci’s academy in 1995, while she was in ninth grade, and took over all coaching at their house. When questioned in 2000 if it would have been better for them to have stuck to the traditional path of playing on the junior circuit, Williams replied, “Everyone does things in their own way. I believe Venus and I simply tried a different path and found it to be successful.”
Career
Serena Williams has won more prize money than any other female tennis player in history and has been ranked number one in the world eight times. Williams has amassed more than $90 million in prize money throughout the course of his career as of this writing. She has 23 Grand Slam singles titles and 14 Grand Slam doubles titles alongside her sister Venus Williams. She also won gold medals at the Olympics in Sydney, Beijing, and London.
At the age of 14, Williams competed in her first professional tournament in 1995. A No. 304 ranked Williams made quite an impression at the 1997 Ameritech Cup, upsetting the No. 7 and No. 4 ranked players before losing in the semifinals. Her career was spurred by the victories, and she finished 1997 at No. 99.
The following year witnessed a slew of notable victories, including doubles crowns at Grand Slam tournaments like Wimbledon and the US Open. Her first singles title, though, remained elusive. Williams began to display her early supremacy in 1999, defeating a number of elite players and winning the US Open, her first Grand Slam singles championship.
Serena Williams maintained her domination in the early 2000s, eventually rising to the top of the rankings in 2002. She also won three Grand Slam titles that year, including the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open, all of which she won against her sister, Venus, in the finals. She won her fourth Grand Slam title, the Australian Open, in 2003. This gave her the “Serena Slam,” in which she held the title for all four major Grand Slam tournaments at the same time. During the 2014-15 Grand Slam season, she would repeat the feat.
She struggled with health and personal challenges during the next few years, including knee surgery and the death of her half-sister, Yetunde. While she continued to win tournaments, she dropped out of the top ten, leading many in the tennis community to believe that she and her sister, Venus, were no longer the dominant forces they once were. Williams, on the other hand, had battled her way back to the top of the rankings by 2008, winning a streak of Grand Slam titles.
The year 2011 saw a resurgence in health issues. Doctors discovered a blood clot in one of her lungs that year. Many people wondered if she would ever return to the sport after she underwent surgeries to correct this. However, she won significant titles again the following year, including her first-ever women’s singles gold medal at the 2012 Olympic Games. She won the US Open in 2012, the French, Australian, and the US Open in 2013, as well as Wimbledon that year, Wimbledon in 2014 and 2015, and the Australian Open and Wimbledon in 2016. She also won the Australian Open and Wimbledon in 2016. Serena Williams had a rough year in 2018, losing two consecutive US Opens and Wimbledon.
Serena Williams has remained a formidable force in women’s tennis despite suffering injuries and taking time off to have a mother. Her 23 Grand Slam singles titles are among her many achievements.
Endorsements
Williams is one of the world’s most well-known endorsement athletes. Outside of tennis, she earns $15-20 million per year as a brand ambassador for Nike and Kraft Foods. Williams signed a $40 million agreement with Nike in 2004 to create a fashion brand.
Activism
Williams uses social media to support a variety of causes, including Black Lives Matter and the LGBT community. She’s also a strong advocate for gender equality on and off the court, and she’s open about her hardships as a female tennis player. She has garnered numerous honors for her work, including the NAACP President’s Award.
Philanthropy
Serena and Venus Williams are well-known for visiting hospitals and participating in tennis tournaments to raise money for the Ronald McDonald House charity. In 2004 and 2005, they had an entire ESPN program dedicated to their charity tour. Serena established the Serena Williams Foundation, which awards scholarships to deserving students at colleges across the world. The Serene Williams Secondary School in Matooni, Kenya, was similarly built with the support of the foundation. In addition, the organization partnered with Helping Hands Jamaica to construct the Salt Marsh Primary School in Trelawny Parish for Jamaican children.
Serena has been an international Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF since 2011 and has worked closely with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles. Serena and Venus work together on charity projects as part of the Williams Sisters Fund. In remembrance of their late sister, they collaborated to establish the Yetunde Price Resource Center in Compton. The facility assists and serves families that have been affected by neighborhood violence. Williams joined the Purple Purse project of the Allstate Foundation as an Ambassador in 2017. She also donates to the Elton John AIDS Foundation, the NHS’s Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London, the HollyRod Foundation, the Eva Longoria Foundation, and a number of other organizations.
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Personal life
Williams is married to Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit. On December 10, 2016, he proposed to her in Rome. In a Reddit post on December 30, 2016, Williams confirmed their engagement. They tied the knot in New Orleans on November 16, 2017. Beyoncé, Anna Wintour, Kelly Rowland, and Kim Kardashian were among the guests at the wedding. After the wedding, she planned to move to San Francisco with Ohanian.
Williams posted a sideways image of herself on Snapchat on April 19, 2017, focusing on her tummy and captioning it “20 weeks,” sparking speculation that she was pregnant.
Her publicist announced the news later that evening. She was eight weeks pregnant when she won the Australian Open earlier that year, despite the fact that she was 20 weeks pregnant when she announced her pregnancy. Williams later claimed that she accidentally posted the photo on Snapchat and that she had planned to keep it for her records.
Williams gave birth to her daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr, in September 2017, and she is known as “Olympia.”
She had to have an emergency cesarean section because the baby’s heart rate dropped during labor, and she was upset at first.
After delivering birth, she experienced a pulmonary embolism, which rendered her bedridden for six weeks and delayed her return to training.
(This was not her first contact with venous thromboembolism; she had been admitted to the hospital in 2011 for a pulmonary embolism caused by a deep vein thrombosis.) She disclosed in August 2018 that she was suffering from postpartum depression. Williams gifted her kid the Qai Qai doll, which has gone viral on social media. She’s also been asked if she’ll teach her kid to play tennis, to which she responds that she’s already engaged a coach for her daughter. She also has a lot of images of her and her daughter with rackets on the tennis court.
Williams was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, but she claims to have “never truly practiced” the religion.
When she wins a match, she frequently thanks Jehovah.
Williams confirmed that she follows the following guidelines: “Olympia isn’t a big fan of birthdays. We don’t do it because we’re Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
Jill Smoller, a former player, is Williams’ current agent.
2022: More withdrawals and promotions for King Richard
Williams confirmed in December 2021 that she would not compete in 2022 Australian Open due to the same leg problem.
She is rated 241st in the world as of March 2022, and has not played a match since Wimbledon in 2021.
She spent much of early 2022 with her sisters spreading King Richard’s story about her father. She took part in a number of award shows, including the 94th Academy Awards.