NEW YORK — Twenty-three years ago, Serena Williams won her first Grand Slam title here. On Friday, she said her goodbyes in the same place, in front of a sold-out crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
“Thank you daddy, I know you’re watching. Thanks mom,” Williams said before starting to cry during her post-match on-court interview. “Everyone that’s here, that’s been on my side, for so many years, decades …
“These are happy tears, I guess. I don’t know. And I wouldn’t be Serena if there wasn’t Venus, so thank you Venus. She’s the only reason Serena Williams ever existed … It’s been a fun ride. It’s been the most incredible ride and journey I’ve ever been on.”
It was a fitting and full-circle finale for one of sports’ most legendary champions.
Williams, 40, shared her intention to retire after the US Open in an essay in Vogue last month, and has been given a hero’s farewell in her matches since. She admitted she had mixed feelings about the decision and knew it would be difficult to walk away from the sport that had defined much of her life.
“I don’t want it to be over, but at the same time I’m ready for what’s next,” she wrote. “I don’t know how I’m going to be able to look at this magazine when it comes out, knowing that this is it, the end of a story that started in Compton, California, with a little Black girl who just wanted to play tennis. This sport has given me so much.”
Alongside her older sister Venus, the duo began as young girls with a dream, training on the public courts near their house with their father, Richard. Today, Serena is one of the most successful athletes of all time and arguably the best tennis player in history.
She began her professional career in 1995 as a 14-year-old. In 2022, Williams walks away from the game with 858 tour victories, 73 singles titles, an Olympic gold medal and 319 weeks at No. 1. Together with Venus, she won 14 major doubles titles and three Olympic golds. Williams’ 23-major mark remains the most by a player, man or woman, in the Open Era.
“It’s been fascinating to watch,” Roger Federer told the Wall Street Journal in 2018. “[Serena] had a totally different upbringing — I came up through Switzerland with the federation, she did it with her dad and her sister. It’s an amazing story unto itself — and then she became one of the greatest, if not the greatest tennis player of all time.”
But the wins and the…
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