From a young age, Serena Williams has shown the world what it looks like to be a superior
athlete. But she wasn't born with a racket in her hand. Her origin story is just as,
if not more, humble than the rest of us. Keep watching to witness her stunning transformation.
On September 26, 1981, Serena Williams was born in Saginaw, Michigan to Richard Williams
and Oracene Price. Two years later, her family relocated to Compton in Southern California.
Religion played a central role in her life from the start, as she was raised as a Jehovah's
Witness. Williams is the youngest of five siblings, and she's closest to her sister
Venus, who was born just a year before her in 1980. While growing up, the two sisters
spent a lot of time together and always looked out for each other, which sometimes meant
Venus giving Serena lunch money when she ran out of her own.
It's probably safe to say that Serena wouldn't be where she is today if it weren't for her
father Richard, who put a tennis racket in her hand when she was only 3 years old. He
and his wife taught themselves to play, in the hopes of instilling a love of the sport
into their youngest daughters. Both Serena and Venus took to the game with passion and
skill, which was something that Rick Macci, Serena's coach from 1991 through 1995, noticed
immediately. In 2020, he told ESPN,
"What blew me away was their burning desire to run and fight and get to every ball like
their hair was on fire. I had never seen two kids try so hard. I had never seen bodies
that could move like that. Athletes with their body types went to other sports; they didn't
play tennis."
In 1995, when Williams was only 14 years old, she played her first-ever professional tennis
match, against fellow American Annie Miller. She'd been working insanely hard for years
in order to prepare for her debut, but she nonetheless found herself nervous when the
moment finally arrived. As she recalled in a throwback Instagram post in 2015,
"Butterflies consumed my stomach leaving no space for me to eat to prepare for my match."
Unfortunately Williams didn't taste victory, as Miller defeated her within the span of
an hour. As Williams put it,
"Basically she crushed me. Not only did I look like a novice but I looked like I did
not belong anywhere on the court."
While Williams was devastated, she didn't let that stop her. The loss only made her
hungry for more. As she described it,
"Born with an innate insatiable desire to never quit I knew I would return. I would
come back."
Williams may have lost her first professional match, but it soon became clear that losing
just isn't in her DNA. In 1998, she won mixed doubles at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open,
and the next year, she and her sister cleaned up at the Fed Cup. Then, also in 1999, she
made history by becoming the first African-American woman in the Open Era to earn a Grand Slam
title when she won the U.S. Open at the age of 17. That landed her on the cover of Sports
Illustrated and also led to guest appearances on The Simpsons and Hollywood Squares.
But Williams was far from done. In 2002, she won three of the four of the major annual
Grand Slams: the French Open, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open. In all of those tournaments,
she squared off against her sister Venus in the finals. From that point forward, the entire
sport of tennis would never be the same.
While Serena Williams has become one of the best tennis players of all time, that unfortunately
hasn't insulated her from racism, which she's dealt with since the beginning of her career.
There's a long and well-documented history of discriminatory incidents against her, from
offensive cartoons to heckling to excessive drug testing and wardrobe policing.
Williams has also faced the double whammy of sexism along with the racism. One prominent
example occurred during the final of the 2018 U.S. Open, when she criticized the chair umpire
for what she perceived as unfair treatment. During the match, she pleaded with two officials,
saying:
"There are men out here that do a lot worse, but because I'm a woman, because I'm a woman,
you're going to take this away from me? That is not right."
Despite all of the negativity Williams has put up with over the years, that hasn't stopped
her from winning tournament after tournament, which is perhaps the best revenge.
In 2003, tragedy struck the Williams family. On September 14, Serena's oldest sister, Yetunde
Price, was killed in Compton. Only 31 years old at the time, Price was caught in gang
crossfire while in a vehicle with her boyfriend. The entire family was devastated. Another
sister, Isha Price, told ESPN,
"Unless you've experienced that kind of loss, you can't fully describe to somebody else
what that feels like, like part of yourself is gone. You have to almost re-learn how to
live, how to approach every day."
Williams opened up about the experience on an episode of the webseries DiversiTea, as
she brought up the importance of talking about gun violence. As she put it,
"I think we need to get comfortable with having uncomfortable conversations. Situations are
never really gonna get better if you always avoid it, you have to take it head-on."
Serena Williams has been a dominant force in tennis for decades now, but she's by no
means invincible, as she's succumbed to multiple injuries over the years. In 2010, for example,
while in Germany, she stepped on broken glass and unknowingly tore the tendon in her right
foot. She later noticed that her big toe was drooping, so she went to the doctor for an
MRI and ultimately opted for surgery. She told The Guardian at the time,
"I thought it over and decided it was better to have the surgical procedure, for my career
and for my life."
Alas, Williams re-injured that tendon months later, taking her out of the tennis tour for
the season. Even worse, she was hospitalized with a pulmonary embolism in 2011 and had
to get emergency treatment. She managed to recover from all those setbacks in time to
take the 2012 Wimbledon title, her fifth singles victory at that tournament.
In 2015, Williams met Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian in Rome at a hotel breakfast.
"She asked what I did, and I said, 'Oh, I started this company called Reddit, and I
do investing.' And she said, 'Reddit? Never heard of it.'"
The pair hit it off, and the following year, Ohanian popped the big question, and she said
yes! He even flew her out to Rome to return to the very table where they'd first met.
The happy couple tied the knot one year later at a star-studded fairytale wedding at the
Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans. Williams wore a custom Alexander McQueen ball gown
for the occasion, which made the Armani-clad Ohanian grin when he saw her walk down the
aisle. He gushed in his vows,
"I am so excited to write so many more chapters of our fairy tale together. And my whole life
I didn't even realize it, but I was waiting for this moment."
Williams and Ohanian share a daughter named Alexis Olympia, whom they welcomed into the
world two months before the wedding.
While Serena Williams has an impressive list of professional accomplishments under her
belt, perhaps her greatest pride and joy is her daughter Alexis Olympia. In 2018, she
told Vogue,
"We're not spending a day apart until she's 18. Now that I'm 36 and I look at my baby,
I remember that this was also one of my goals when I was little, before tennis took over,
when I was still kind of a normal girl who played with dolls."
To finally realize that long-held dream must feel pretty amazing! In addition to the sheer
joy of having her child, Williams also says that Alexis' presence brings her great comfort.
For one thing, she's felt less anxiety after giving birth. As she put it to Vogue,
"Knowing I’ve got this beautiful baby to go home to makes me feel like I don’t have
to play another match. I don’t need the money or the titles or the prestige. I want
them, but I don’t need them. That’s a different feeling for me."
"She's three now. I'm like, I gotta put my career aside and get her a racket in her hand."
Williams was lucky enough to have a fairly easy pregnancy, but her labor and delivery
were anything but. At the last minute, she had an emergency C-section after her heart
rate plummeted. Fortunately that surgery went well. As Williams recalled to Vogue,
"That was an amazing feeling. And then everything went bad."
"Once I had the C-section, everything from there was pretty much a nightmare."
Williams flagged down a nurse after suddenly experiencing shortness of breath, as she suspected
that she was having yet another pulmonary embolism. Gasping for air, she asked for a
CT scan and blood thinner, but the medical staff didn't listen at first. Instead they
performed an ultrasound on her legs. She recalled saying,
"I told you, I need a CT scan and a heparin drip."
Upon finding nothing on the ultrasound, Williams' medical team finally did as she asked and
discovered small blood clots in her lungs. As she quipped to Vogue,
"I was like, listen to Dr. Williams."
She then got the heparin drip she knew that she needed, thereby pretty much saving her
own life.
In addition to being a tennis juggernaut, a wife, and a mother, Serena Williams is also
an activist and advocate for women and girls. From where she's sitting, she wants to see
the status quo change to allow for more equality. In 2020, she told Vogue,
"In this society, women are not taught or expected to be that future leader or future
CEO. The narrative has to change."
While Williams knows she can't exactly reinvent the wheel, she's confident that by speaking
up, she can enact change, even if it's incremental. As she put it to Vogue,
"Maybe it doesn't get better in time for me, but someone in my position can show women
and people of color that we have a voice, because Lord knows I use mine."
Williams has also been vocal about fighting for racial equality. For her personally, that
means loving her own Blackness.
"I love who I am. I love how I look. And my body, it's creating all these opportunities
for me, and I wouldn't have it any other way."
She's never been one to wish that she was any other color, or that she had a lighter
skin tone. It should be no surprise then to learn that she's an ardent supporter of Black
Lives Matter, and she's glad that technology is now exposing injustices that have always
existed. In 2020, she told Vogue,
"At the end of May, I had so many people who were white writing to me saying, 'I'm sorry
for everything you've had to go through.' I think for a minute they started – not
to understand, because I don’t think you can understand – but they started to see.
I was like: well, you didn’t see any of this before? I’ve been talking about this
my whole career. It’s been one thing after another."
"The day I stop fighting for equality, and for people that look like you and me, will
be the day I'm in my grave."
With all that Serena Williams has accomplished, you might be tempted to think she's ready
to rest on her laurels. In 2018, she confessed to Vogue,
"To be honest, there's something really attractive about the idea of moving to San Francisco
and just being a mom. But not yet."
She added,
"Maybe this goes without saying, but it needs to be said in a powerful way: I absolutely
want more Grand Slams. I'm well aware of the record books, unfortunately. It's not a secret
that I have my sights on 25."
That 25 figure would put Williams one ahead of the record number of Grand Slam wins racked
up by legendary Australian Margaret Court. As of 2020, she's at 23 career Grand Slam
singles titles, and if she can notch at least two more before her playing days are over,
that would cement her status as the greatest of all time. But even if she doesn't pull
it off, we pity anyone who doubts that she truly is the GOAT.
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